That would be an accurate analogy if these documents were linked to from a publicly-accessible portion of the site. They were not. This is more like someone walking into an unlocked back room and grabbing books that hadn't been shelved.
I think that's a bit harsh. The documents at that URL were understood to be freely available to the public. As I physical analogy, I'd think about it more as one of those restaurant straw dispensers. He got tired of pressing the button each time for a new straw, and instead opened the lid and grabbed a bunch out.
Going to a restaurant and taking every single straw out of the top of the straw dispenser is clearly anti-social and is probably theft.
This is absurd. This is not private property. Ordinary law-abiding people do walk into government offices and ask questions, and when they get answers, do continue asking questions and getting answers. Ordinary law abiding people to browse all the products on display at a store. Ordinary law abiding people do flip through all the pages of a catalog that is sent to their home. This Orwellian attitude that looking at a…
> This Orwellian attitude that looking at anything is criminal if the government retroactively decides they didn't want you to see it, is terrifying. This is the big problem here. There's no way the way the Freedom of Information Act in Canada is written the way it is because of the democratic wishes of Canadians. Every day our government moves further away from governing according to the will of Canadians and more t…
Man, if it bugs you, have some sympathy for us directly south! People get straight-up fierce about the civic platitudes around here.
You're not. Ordinary people don't even know that you can do that.
You are saying that ordinary people don't know what a URL actually is. This is ridiculous. It takes a certain level of computer illiteracy to never notice that you can access stuff by typing into the address bar directly, or by modifying what's already there. It also doesn't take a computer whiz to use DownThemAll to enumerate URLs and download them all. They even have a dedicated function for this! Yes, one does hav…
i can see how the older generation is thinking though, they see it like leaving a window unlocked doesn’t mean you can the laws are interpreted and applied by powerful people in a way that suits the way they think - that much i think could have been predicted (but not by a teenager) did the weev ruling surprise anybody other than hackers?
It feels like the reduction of a nuanced problem into a simple one with a single victim and a single perpetrator, and only one acceptable narrative. "It's not my fault I left my window open and you took advantage of it. I shouldn't have to keep my windows locked." "If you see an unlocked window it's not an opportunity for you to take advantage of." That's admittedly fairly obtuse, but you can see elements of this pla…
i don’t agree with any of that. powerful people choose to interpret law in the way most favorable to their power
wolf doesn’t care about the reasoning of sheep so long as they submit
Sounds like you might be thinking of an anchor element. People ask for the "link" when they mean the URI all the time.
Wikipedia disagrees: > In computing, a hyperlink, or simply a link, is a reference to data that the reader can directly follow either by clicking, tapping, or hovering. A hyperlink points to a whole document or to a specific element within a document. Hypertext is text with hyperlinks. The text that is linked from is called anchor text. A software system that is used for viewing and creating hypertext is a hypertext…
a "link" is something that connects two entities together in some arbitrary way. a chain link for instance connects the constituent entities of a chain (other links) together. a link in a linked list connects different nodes together. and a hypertext link connects two hypertext resources together. what you're doing is picking one specific definition and applying it liberally to all potential interpretations and contexts of said word. this is why i tend to espouse the virtues of generality over specificity; when you get too specific, you start eliminating the actual utility and flexibility of language. a link in terms of computing is most certainly NOT just a hypertext link, that is only one very specific interpretation of the concept at hand that you're falling back on to try and further your argument. liberally ignoring all the other possible interpretations is quite intellectually dishonest imo. still, you're entitled to perceive things how you want and argue it whatever way you desire. just know that the majority of reasonable and educated individuals will disagree with you. you're up shit creek and you keep denying every paddle that's offered to ya m8
No OP has a point, we shouldn't talk in metaphors so much... It's not necessary. The web is in many ways a huge collection of resources that reference each other. Some of these references are explicit in links, others in text, and some are available for programmatic access. In fact many resources can be discovered by programmatic access, and there is no inherent reason to think this is wrong. Just because an API isn'…
> In fact many resources can be discovered by programmatic access, and there is no inherent reason to think this is wrong. Agreed. There is no inherent or intrinsic reason to expect that any given document or any given URL ought to be restricted. However, a look at the documents could have provided some extrinsic reason to stop looking. For example, if I find a filing cabinet full of classified documents, I will not…
No OP has a point, we shouldn't talk in metaphors so much... It's not necessary. The web is in many ways a huge collection of resources that reference each other. Some of these references are explicit in links, others in text, and some are available for programmatic access. In fact many resources can be discovered by programmatic access, and there is no inherent reason to think this is wrong. Just because an API isn'…
> In fact many resources can be discovered by programmatic access, and there is no inherent reason to think this is wrong. Agreed. There is no inherent or intrinsic reason to expect that any given document or any given URL ought to be restricted. However, a look at the documents could have provided some extrinsic reason to stop looking. For example, if I find a filing cabinet full of classified documents, I will not…
ah yes the age old problem of actus reus sans mens rea
If a URL responds to any unauthorized HTTP request with data, how is the requester supposed to know that the data they received is supposed to be private or sensitive?
A better (more accurate) analogy than finding an open window/door is that of asking a government employee for data.
Kid: "Hi, what is the personal info in that file?"
Employee:
What they should say: "You are not authorised to see the contents of that file."
What they actually said: "Sure, here's all the information in that file."
Wow. The trauma inflicted upon the children in the family when the Canadian government bursts into their house can never be undone or taken back. Nor can the financial and mental, emotional stress of losing their computers and ability to do productive work and go to school. (Edit: will there be any reparations for this abhorrent behaviour? Have they apologized? Will they, at least? Not that it matters, the damage to…
Is it trauma, or an education in tyranny? Admittedly, it's not the kind of education I'd prefer for my children, but in the long run, nakedly tyrannical behavior is better than concealed.