That's a good distinction. I had to look up the HTTP 1.1 RFC, 2616 and read section 9.1.1 "Safe Methods" to note that while what you're saying is correct, the

That's a good distinction. I had to look up the HTTP 1.1 RFC, 2616 and read section 9.1.1 "Safe Methods" to note that while what you're saying is correct, the RFC does strongly discourage... well, here: In particular, the convention has been established that the GET and HEAD methods SHOULD NOT have the significance of taking an action other than retrieval. These methods ought to be considered "safe". This allows user agents to represent other methods, such as POST, PUT and DELETE, in a special way, so that the user is made aware of the fact that a possibly unsafe action is being requested. Naturally, it is not possible to ensure that the server does not generate side-effects as a result of performing a GET request; in fact, some dynamic resources consider that a feature. The important distinction here is that the user did not request the side-effects, so therefore cannot be held accountable for them.