> expanding on that, would you consider it appropriate referencing to say "That is a crime according to the French criminal law" without specifying
where it says that? (I'm assuming here that the French criminal law is a single document.)
Not really; there are two issues, of which I think one supports you much more strongly than the other one does.
First (supporting you more), the French criminal law is a very large document. Appropriate referencing should include a more reliable way to find the relevant text than "it's in there somewhere".
Second, whether something is a crime according to any particular body of criminal law is generally a subjective question that cannot be definitively answered by reading the text of the law, even if you read it all. Because of this, appropriate referencing demands that you provide the text which you are interpreting to mean that the particular events under discussion constitute a crime.
This second point seems more important to me. If you say that's a crime according to the French criminal law, which states '[direct quote]', that's a good reference even though you don't specify where in the law your text is found. If you provide the location of the text you're thinking of, but not the text itself, that's a much worse reference, even though it's still better than just waving at "the French criminal law".
But part of that calculation is the fact that I expect, if I have a genuine quote in my hand, that I'll be able to locate where in the law it came from. Bodies of law are generally pretty good about this. Hundreds of years ago, specifying where in the law a direct quote occurred would have been more important.
(Issues with citing the law get even worse than this; judgments that postdate the law can have dramatic effects on its meaning without triggering any change in its official wording.)
> I would consider a wrong (or broken) link to be an error in the document, but I would not consider erroneous statements in the linked document to be inaccuracies or errors in the linking document. Imagine that instead of an outdated policy, the linked document was one promoting homeopathy. Would you say that the original document contains misleading statements about healthcare? I would not.
I wouldn't, but that's because the link specifies that it details Alaska Airlines' customer support policy. If the same thing happened in a Mayo Clinic page outlining their view of homeopathy, then that document would be making misleading statements about healthcare.
If a delayed passenger called Alaska Airlines and said "in your statement about the outage, it mentions that you reimburse affected passengers for any hotel accommodations they may have made without limitation" (and that is an accurate description of the mistakenly-linked outdated policy), do you think it would be more accurate for the representative to respond "yes, it does say that, but unfortunately that link goes to an outdated policy and we can't reimburse more than $100", or to respond "no, it doesn't say that. It only says that we have a policy, and our policy is to reimburse up to $100"?