Andreas Haugstrup Pedersen | solitude.dk

Through Lucas Gonze I saw Tim Berners-Lee's Links and Law. Lucas pulls out this quote:

A normal hypertext link does NOT necessarily imply that

• One document endorses the other; or that
• One document is created by the same person as the other, or that
• One document is to be considered part of another.

This is important. I agree that normal links has no implied meaning or relation. Lucas uses this as argument as to why playlist creators should not be scolded for linking directly to media objects instead of the encapsulating. I think he leaves out the most important thing. In the very next section Berners-Lee writes:

Images, embedded objects, and background sounds and images are by default to be considered part of the document.

Embedded objects are a part of the document. This is also true for blog entries where links marked with rel="enclosure" carries with it meaning (links marked with the rel attribute have meaning, they are not regular links). They carry the meaning that the destination of the link is a part of the current document — just as if it had been an embedded object.

And people should respect that relationship and not link directly to the media object. Links should point to the blog entry permalink. By extension of the rule that normal links carry no meaning blogging engine must not add any media object linked as enclosures in a feed.