RE: [deepLinking-25] What to say in defense of principle that dee p linking is not an illegal act?

> Tim Bray
>
> Bullard, Claude L (Len) wrote:
> > If a person breaks into your house and steals your jewelry,
> > is it theft when they entered through an unlocked door?
> 
> The analogy is more like someone has a pile of logs in a 
> front yard with 
> no fence and a sign pointing at them saying "Logs here" and nobody 
> hanging around.  It's probably not theft if you walk away 
> with one. 

Arrgghh! These analogies don't make any sense on the web. By definition
I can't steal resources using the web. All I can do is download
representations. The idea that we can invoke trespass (not theft) laws
on the retrieval of representations is not just asinine, it's corrupt,
and predicated on a wrong headed model of how the web works, the very
same one that gives rise to the phrase 'surfing the web'. 

This is to with a Legal Architecture which neither entails from, nor is
justified by, the Technical Architecture. Tim Bray is right to raise the
matter.

regards,
Bill de hÓra

Received on Thursday, 25 July 2002 18:46:19 UTC