I requested this feature before, and the guy at nginx wiki was kind enough to put it on the feature request list.

http://wiki.codemongers.com/NginxFeatureRequests

however, I still think it's worth it to add a feature like secdownload to nginx; because X-Accel-Redirect does not allow me to create temp link to a static file, which expires after a certain time.

X-Accel-redirect gives me some control to check user authenticity before serving the static file (redirecting); my problem with that is I want to decouple the web server (checking authenticity) from serving static files. with lighttpd secdownload feature, the static file server and web server are on different machines; I check the authenticity of the requester once, create the temp link which expires later, then I don't have to worry about checking the requester authenticity everytime the file is requested.

I'm planning on building a website (using django) with a sophisticated access control, and I'm leaning toward lighttpd just because of the flexibility secdownload feature gives me. However, I really like the configuration of nginx; it's easy to read and powerful, even though I'm expert in either lighttpd nor in nginx.