A Swedish technology company, Intentia, filed a complaint against Reuters for hacking into their website and obtaining the company's financial report. The catch is that Reuters did not bypass any security measures. They simply typed in a URL and viewed the financial report from one of Intentia's publicly available web pages. Intentia argued that this web page was "private" because there was no explicit link to it. Reuters countered that anything accessible on a public website, whether or not it's linked to, is undoubtedly public. Why all the confusion? One computer science professor, Edward Felten, suggests that website owners clarify the difference between public and private information by protecting private information with a password.

The Intentia case and recent cases dealing with deep linking show the increasing conflict between open access and controlled access to online information. The Internet started out as a network for sharing information. Now there are more individuals and businesses using the Internet to communicate with specific audiences rather than the general public. They view their website as private property and want complete control over how it will be used.