yeah we've thought about that, but the real reason we created swooh in the first place, (well, i didn't create it, the others did) was for personal use. to have a personal file/web/game server. and that's what it was, till people we knew were like "Hey man, could i have some space for my files?" and then HLP's members needed space, and i felt sorry for them, because it's not right that you can't have space online, so i proposed the idea (and the other three admins thought it was good) to give out accounts, to the public (although most of our PEONs are still HLP members, because i advertised PEON accounts to HLP, and they haven't been advertised anywhere else, because the main reason was to help the HLP community).
i don't think actually buying a dedicated server would have a point though, becuase after you pay for the server, you've still got to pay for bandwidth, and since we already HAVE a server, all we need is bandwidth. it's all been fine and dandy until the ISP started having problems (they're going out of business i think... shhh) and started disabling protocols such as ICMP (ping) and such. i have a feeling soon we're going to, as you say, have to do something drastic
