You're quite right about all of that, and I have applied those principles to my REST interface at work. But I didn't say the examples for the OP were REST :-)

CGI::Application::Dispatch has some extra features to make REST easier to implement (by attaching the HTTP verb to the runmode name, so you'd have page_GET, page_DELETE etc. as the real run modes, dispatched from the single /page url). I don't think it's relevant to the OP's question though, and would probably confuse the issue.

By the way, I really, really like the REST approach. It encourages a clear, uncluttered implementation on the backend, and it's very simple to integrate the resulting resources into other applications. Compared to SOAP, REST is a lot cleaner ;)

I also found the columns on xml.com helpful in gaining a more practical understanding of the REST philosophy.