To be fair, what webserver guarantees that a url it generates will be valid later on? Perhaps the inode example isn't the best, but in principle, in the framework of a stateless protocol I think this risk is not problematic. And at the end of the day, it's an impossible problem to solve perfectly - you can't keep something alive serverside just because a client wants it too. The lifespan of an inode is something you'll need to manage externally to the protocol.