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ken wrote:
<blockquote cite="mid:4C582229.3070908@bbk.ac.uk" type="cite">On
30/07/2010 12:31, Wendy M. Grossman wrote:
<br>
<br>
> How did they find out? I think we've
<br>
> all often done that kind of thing.
<br>
<br>
So is it as if, faced with a URL like:
<br>
<br>
//jrandomserver.com/~user/directory/interestingdocument.html
<br>
<br>
he then tried to browse:
<br>
<br>
//jrandomserver.com/~user/directory/
<br>
//jrandomserver.com/~user/
<br>
//jrandomserver.com/
<br>
<br>
?
<br>
<br>
Because as Wendy says, we all do that. Its a normal way to use the
Internet. Its probably my default action if I read an interesting post
on a blog I haven't read before, or see a useful paper on something on
an academic site. And sometimes lookign for with music files or images.
I might not do it every day of my life, but I probably do it a number
of times a week and have been for going on twenty years.</blockquote>
<br>
I think that's exactly what Cuthbert did, though Peter (Sommer) can
correct this if it's wrong.<br>
<br>
And I too do it regularly, as a normal way to explore the web.<br>
<br>
So what is worrying about this decision is not that it might be the
result of misguided or irrational judgment, but that it might be right.<br>
<br>
If the CMA makes it an offence to do the unauthorised (knowingly), and
we now know that the only things that give us authority is the use of
links provided by the webhost, then the CMA is producing a most
unsatisfactory result. The problem is its inbuilt assumption that
there is some easily ascertained distinction between what is authorised
and what is not, whereas in many cases it is hard to be sure.<br>
<br>
The "knowingly" requirement may cause many of those cases to default to
"not known to be unauthorised" (unless we prevaricate with an
investigator); but the more Cuthbert-like decisions that get made
(formal precedents or not), the weaker this probability gets.<br>
<br>
Nicholas<br>
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