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 Administrative / General / 3769
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Subject: 
Re: Policy clarification regarding catalogs
Newsgroups: 
lugnet.admin.general
Date: 
Sat, 18 Dec 1999 02:25:21 GMT
Viewed: 
691 times
  
In lugnet.admin.general, Matthew Miller writes:
I don't think that's clear at all! It may be simply a matter of poor index
design, or laziness. Luckily for my argument :) I have a great example of
this already.

<URL:http://www.mattdm.org/mindstorms/>

is an intended-to-be-public website. Check out <URL:http://www.mattdm.org/>:
you won't find it there at all.

But there's an even better example: the countless ~username web sites (or
/username, at some sites, like AOL) out there. There are very rarely
links from the main page to these web sites, let alone indexes. Often, the
best way to find the site of someone you think is at a given university is
to guess based on their username. (This is a pretty good analogy to guessing
the URL of an image at the Lego web site, wouldn't you say?)

For that matter, people guess that the web site of a given corporation is
"http://www.companyname.com/" all the time. What if that's not been
announced somewhere? Might it be illegal to mention that they've got a site
there?

I thought we were talking about links to images.


Actually, I just realized as I was typing all this: I may actually agree
with you about attempts at security through obscurity expressing at least
an intent not to publish. But:

I think the fact that the images are *gone* now expresses an even stronger
intent not to publish.  :)


The URLs on the Lego site follow an easy-to-understand pattern. (As do most
of my examples above.) So there is not even a pathetic attempt at security.
Which I think renders that point moot.

But if a web developer at some company makes an idiotic mistake like that
(and I'd say ya, someone would deserve to be fired or at least transferred
for something like that), does that mean that the company (as an entitity)
actually intended for that to happen?  Deep philosophy aside, I think the
answer is probably not.

Again, in the case of what actually transpired, I think what Remy did was
perfectly fair, since the URLs he obtained were obtained from pages that
were publicly accessible to the entire world for more than a whole day
before they were taken down.  But if URLs were gotten by guessing or poking
and making up new ones and discovering things that aren't linked to, then
that's gotta be different considering the intent-to-publish thing.  (I mean
ethically and respectfully, not legally and technically.)

--Todd



Message has 1 Reply:
  Re: Policy clarification regarding catalogs
 
(...) There's a difference? (I'm serious.) Anyway, Brad Justus' statement is about "images or material". (...) *shrug* Perhaps. The web site that was at <URL:(URL) isn't there any more. Doesn't mean I didn't mean to publish it. :) (...) I think I (...) (25 years ago, 18-Dec-99, to lugnet.admin.general)

Message is in Reply To:
  Re: Policy clarification regarding catalogs
 
(...) I don't think that's clear at all! It may be simply a matter of poor index design, or laziness. Luckily for my argument :) I have a great example of this already. <URL:(URL) is an intended-to-be-public website. Check out <URL:(URL): you won't (...) (25 years ago, 18-Dec-99, to lugnet.admin.general)

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