@neil yep.

So here's a related example: say a CEO publishes a bunch of secret information to his company's website at a secret address, then someone unexpectedly guesses the address and downloads the information.

In my opinion the CEO has no room to complain since he effectively publicly published the information, and the code worked as intended, as you say.

However, per my point, legal systems around the world would indulge the claim that this constitutes hacking and a violation of rights.

There are many, many implications of this, not the least letting the CEO off the hook for publicly releasing the damaging information.

But that's how the world evolved; that horse is out of the barn.

This English case is yet another result of a legal system that never was properly handling computer issues.