It seems that all the pieces required to make this happen are already in place. We are able to copy files from LS clients over to other windows/the desktop, we can sync a handheld, and we can make the LS client playback the file as if it were local. So LS clients are able to do a lot of things when it is able to resolve the local network path.
Strangely, we are able to rip using an LS client. It will rip to the directory specified in options, but it doesnt populate any of the metadata. Seems to be the same when you open a library in read only mode too. I learnt this painfully after ripping a whole bunch of Russian classical music and tagging it by hand as I was ripping. The next time I connected to the LS server I had one blank album with hundreds of metadata-less files.
That's my christmas wish.