[edwhitesell]

Some graphical FTP clients might download a list of files, but certainly not all. It's not a standard part of the protocol to immediately execute 'LIST'.

You may have fat fingered a URL, but your browser still asked for it and any content located there.

I don't agree with prosecution on things like this, but the reality is the best analogies are still doors and locks: My front door is connected to a walkway, which is connected to the public sidewalk. You may see my door is open and unlocked, but you're still trespassing if you walk in. If you did, I may decide not to press charges, but that's my choice. And I'd be mad as hell at anyone who created a law that said I couldn't just because my door is open.

I think the best solution is for people to treat others with a little more goodwill, and find other ways to make society less litigious overall. Unfortunately, corporations drive a lot of that because a corporation's only goal is to make money. People, however, can make different choices.

[caf]

The "doors and locks" analogy is not perfectly applicable in this case.

In the cases of house front doors in the suburbs, the overwhelming expectation is both that the door is intended to be locked and that the public is not intended to freely come and go from the interior of the residences. This is a custom so well-established that it is essentially universal, and a house with the door open and unlocked is an obvious outlier.

In the case of fileservers on the public internet, the overwhelming expectation is that anyone may connect to them, and if anonymous logins are accepted, access the files on the server. Again, this is well-established custom.

Because the customary behaviour in the two situations are so different, the analogy is inapplicable.

[edwhitesell]

(replying to myself)

After walking away from this I thought of an analogy to fit the other side: Attractive Nuisance

Maybe a security researcher/group/company could sue on behalf of customers affected by an open FTP server because it's an "Attractive Nuisance" on the Internet. Affecting a company's bottom-line is about the only way to get some to take notice.

[larvaetron]

>Some graphical FTP clients might download a list of files, but certainly not all.

Certainly, most? I can't think of any FTP GUI application I've ever used not displaying a list of files stored on the remote host upon connecting.