I know it's intentional. I'm just saying it results in something that is definitely not direct and noticeably less useful. That it can be made to trigger a download is not particularly useful.
I agree that it's not direct and less useful. The commenter I originally responded to, however, appeared to be concerned with the ability to link to files in a way that doesn't bring up the Dropbox UI, which the query parameter does at least accomplish to some degree.
