Gabriel-
I don't think the mirrors have a right to get free
hosting, and it's not
hard to save them really if somebody wanted to.
Well, we don't make it exactly easy either, what with blocking all the
spiders ..
If there's a concensus
(and no copyright problem) to provide a big tar with all images for more
convenience, then it's just a matter of adding it at
download.wikimedia.org.
If it's OK for us to host the images in the first place, then it's also OK
to put them into a tarball.
Regards,
Erik