Combining public and private downloads, access permissions - to ensure download count stats

Not sure where this request goes, but it is based on the private_download module.

I needed to put some files in 'public' folder, and some in 'private'. I needed the download count module to count for both, and have less messing about configuring pre-process functions for the urls, swf players etc.

I used a couple of filefield/upload path modules to get items into the the right folders - but the main thing i did was duplicate this module into a public_download module, and granted access permissions to all, so that the two modules work in tandem and I still have an apache-served directory for files that don't need monitoring. Is it worth having this module create multiple access-controlled directories from the UI (with entries in the permissions table)?

Just a though/recipe if anyone else is stuck.