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 have to have some computer literacy to be able to do that. No, they don't have to be out of the ordinary.
Well, some people believe being curious and trying things out is not what "normal people" do so it's "antisocial" and you shouldn't do it.
I remember a teacher yelling at me for trying some slightly advanced features in a hardware design language. I was really proud I could implement something I didn't thought possible, but her reaction was along the lines "Do you want attention? Why can't you just stay quiet and do what the rest of the class does without showing off?".
Stifling creativity and curiosity, especially in children, encouraging them to be mediocre "like ordinary people" is disgusting and counter productive.
Reminds me the first time I got to touch a word processor. We were supposed to insert a picture with the "clip art" feature. I made a mistake and inserted a "graph" instead. An empty graph, with grey hashed borders, that I didn't know how to delete or undo at the time. So I asked for help.
> Aaahh, he crashed my computer!
Went the teacher. Which then swiftly closed my unsaved document. 15 minutes of work, gone. As well as any remaining trust I had for her. I had done something unexpected, and she was afraid.
I don't think I was quite able to articulate it at the time, but she would have made a fine witch hunter. I do recall a sense of unpredictability though, and reminded myself not to step on that tiger's tail ever again.
Whether it is common knowledge or not has no bearing on whether it’s criminal, so I wasn’t using ordinary to mean “of normal computer literacy”. If you want to use some specific definitions that turn your claim into something trivially obvious, please define them ahead of time.
But lots of things are legal or not based on what typical people would do or think. "Battery" is contact a normal person would find offensive. So touching someone's shoulder to get their attention is not battery, but poking someone in the rib might be. More relevantly, implied licenses to access property are defined by reference to what a normal person would consider implied. So an invitation to enter a store implies a license to access the parts a normal person would assume they can access, and not parts a normal person would assume they are not supposed to access.
It's not a technical shell game. If you asked your mom, "hey, do you think they meant to have people be able to access those documents, where you can only get to them by editing numbers in the URL," she would say "no." That's what defines what is legal or not in this context.
Google, that hotbed of criminal activity, is displaying links to and even accepting paid advertising for these illegal devices that can access telecommunications systems reachable only by editing numbers!
If you asked your mom, "Am I free to access all the
public-facing information on the Government Freedom of Information server", what would she say? The technical details of how to make the connection are irrelevant. My mother doesn't know how to connect to a BBS, does that mean that anyone accessing a BBS is breaking the law?
> If you asked your mom, "hey, do you think they meant to have people be able to access those documents, where you can only get to them by editing numbers in the URL," she would say "no."
No, she would say "I don't know what you're talking about, can you put that in plain English?" And then you could get her to give any answer you wanted by phrasing the plain English appropriately.
> But lots of things are legal or not based on what typical people would do or think.
Good thing computers use unambiguous protocols to communicate explicit intent.
> If you asked your mom, [...] That's what defines what is legal or not in this context.
I'm really terrified of a world where the law is made by asking laypeople what they think. Just like we don't define borders by asking random strangers on the street where countries are, I don't see how it's a good idea to define laws for technical services and protocols by asking people who barely understand computers what they think.
I’m an ordinary law-abiding person, and I fiddle with URLs. I know lots of people in that group.