An HTTP Status Code For Censorship?

New submitter Tryfen writes "UK ISPs are being forced to block The Pirate Bay. One is using 'HTTP 403 Forbidden' to tell users that they cannot access the site. From the article: 'However, chief among my concerns is the technical way this censorship is implemented. At the moment, my ISP serves up an HTTP 403 error.' ... As far as I am concerned, this response is factually incorrect. According to the W3C Specifications: "The 4xx class of status code is intended for cases in which the client seems to have erred."' So, should there be a specific HTTP status code to tell a user they are being censored?"

Comments

No problem

[Wonko the Sane]

Just convince the censors to set the Evil bit on all packets returning the HTTP error code for a blocked site.

Re:No problem

[MightyMartian]

Screw status codes. There should be a rifle pointed at the head of every legislator who votes on one of these sorts of measures.

Re:No problem

[Anonymous Coward]

Screw status codes. There should be a rifle pointed at the head of every legislator who votes on one of these sorts of measures.

George Washington didn't get rid of big British government by voting, holding protests (don't forget your permit!), or writing his elected officials. George Washington got rid of big British government by orchestrating the execution of hundreds of British government officials...

Re:No problem

[Yvan256]

Highly unlikely. George Washington has been dead for a long time.

Re:No problem

[bky1701]

Democracy is by definition tyranny of the majority. That's why most countries have constitutions that cannot be violated and why there is no pure democracy.

Re:No problem

[pthisis]

Having said that, there's a reason why Washington was nicknamed "Cincinnatus". Strong leaders who would voluntarily give up power when it's no longer needed have always been hard to find.

It's a terrible nickname, in general, though. Cincinnatus stepped down from an essentially military position at the end of the war, but he didn't similarly give up his truly governmental position as Senator. And he spent his entire career opposing the sort of Constitution that Washington fought for, and opposing equality for the people.

In fact, he served as one of the most widely hated politicians in Roman history well into his 80s--he was beloved by the patrician noble class who wrote numerous hagiographies, but as a Senator and politician he was a horribly classist ruler who spent his entire career opposing the right of the lower and middle classes to involve themselves in governance. Even where the lower classes had the legal right to form tribunes with governmental power, he'd send his son Caeso Quinctius with troops to break them up and prevent them from reaching quorum (thereby preventing any general legal reform that might benefit the majority).

Indeed, he was so despised as a ruler that the Law of the Twelve Tables and the Roman Constitution were largely written as a backlash to his unmitigated pro-aristocratic draconianism. Plebian leader Terentilius opposed him for decades and advocated the passage of codified laws protecting all Romans and allowing plebs to run for Consul; eventually he managed to organize a secessio plebis (essentially a general strike) while the army was away and unable to put it down, thereby outmaneuvering Cincinatus' pro-patrician bloc and forcing the passage of the Law of Twelve Tables.

It's also worth noting that the dictatorship that he's so famous for giving up was a six-month term as Magister Populi ("Master of the People"), which was created for the express purpose of putting down the Aequi and other tribes in revolt. It's not like he was absolute ruler for life and gave it up.

Re:No problem

[ultranova]

You seem to be forgetting that the wolves are going to kill and eat the sheep. The sheep has every right to defend itself, even if that inconveniences the wolves (skipping a meal won't kill them).

Skipping enough meals will kill the wolves That's why the analogy sucks. It describes a situation where neither liberty nor freedom can possibly exist: the sheep can't trust the wolves, so it has little choice but to keep them helpless and unarmed. The sheep is privileged over the wolves and must keep itself that way in order to survive. It's not good enough for the sheep to just defend itself against, because if the two wolves are allowed to become equal (armed), they can overpower it through numbers. Consequently, the sheep must actively suppress the wolves.

So while the analogy pretends to describe liberty, it actually paints a dystopia where a minority elite oppresses the majority through threats of violence and justifies this with the fact that they'll be killed if they ever lose their grip on power. They are also entirely correct: the majority doesn't have any choice in the matter due to convoluted circumstances. Consequently, no negotiation or program of democratization is possible. The sheep either rule the wolves with an iron hoof or die.

That's why I oppose this particular analogy: not because of some bullshit notion that people should not be allowed to defend themselves, but because it's a very bad analogy.

Re:No problem

[tehcyder]

Screw status codes. There should be a rifle pointed at the head of every legislator who votes on one of these sorts of measures.

Comments such as this help me to take the temperature of the slashdot community from time to time. It used to be that I'd see a lot of sneering comments against gun culture in the US, but maybe the American forefathers we're right that the citizens should have the right to arm themselves in the face of tyranny.

It's just odd that it took DRM to bring about this change in attitude in American slashdotters, if I've observed the trend correctly.

Only a rich autistic teenager stuffed full of self-entitlement would think that trying to prevent access to free downloads of shitty commercial music and movies was cause for armed rebellion.

The whining fucktards on slashdot aren't representative of normal people's reactions.

666

[leromarinvit]

The proper status code would be "666 - Go To Hell". Served to the court, not the customer.

Re:666

[__aaltlg1547]

Only for religiously proscribes IPs. If it's proscribed for political reason the code is "1984 - Thoughtcrime found on site".

Re:666

[FriendlyStatistician]

In keeping with the 3-digit status codes we already have and the use of the 4xx series to indicate that the client has apparently made an error, I think status code 451 might be more appropriate.

RIP, Ray Bradbury.

Re:666

[gman003]

Bad idea for internationalization.

While 666 is considered "evil" and "bad" in most Western (read: Christian) cultures, that does not apply elsewhere. Notably in Arabic-speaking countries: 6 is considered lucky, especially in combinations (one particularly wealthy Qatari spent millions on the phone number 666-6666). I have heard this is because, in Arabic, 6 is "ellah", which has obvious similarities to "Allah".

Same with the Chinese - 6 is considered lucky, and 666 has no particular meaning. And in Jewish numerology, six is associated with God - exactly the opposite of what you intend.

Unless you're suggesting that neither the Arabs, nor the Chinese, engage in censorship...

Re:666

[leromarinvit]

Thanks, I didn't know that, besides the obvious thing that 666, coming from Christian mythology, wouldn't be recognized (at least with the same meaning) by people with different cultural backgrounds.

Maybe the ideal status code for China would be 6489. Then they'd have to censor the censorship, preferably by serving the original content instead...

Re:666

[CastrTroy]

For all who are wondering 6489, or more obviously 6/4/89 (June 4, 1989) is the date of the Tianamen Square massacre.

Re:666

[Attila Dimedici]

In Judaism the number six is associated with imperfection, which is where the number 666 originally comes from. The number seven is associated with God. The author of Revelation was a Jewish Christian who used the number 666 to indicate the failings of this number. The perfect number would have been 777, which would have been the number for God three times (with three being the number for holiness). However, the number of the beast was 666, which is imperfection claiming holiness...or another way of looking at it the Beast is completely (3 times) incomplete (the number 6).

Re:666

[SuricouRaven]

An interesting theory, but with a slight flaw: The earliest manuscripts don't say 666, but 616. It's very possible that 666 was a corruption that displaced the earlier number.

Re:666

[Xtifr]

So, in other words, a way of encoding the date that only Americans would recognize.

Re:666

[Attila Dimedici]

The problem with that is that the oldest manuscript reference we have to the number is a reference in writings by Iranaeus in the 2nd century AD where he says that the number is 666. The oldest manuscript copies of Revelation 13 which have the number as 616 are from the 3rd century AD. Iranaeus was a student of a student of the author of revelation. While it is possible Iranaeus was wrong about what the author of Revelation originally wrote, it is reasonable to assume that he was correct, especially since he refers to scribal errors in the number in some manuscripts.

Re:666

[Anonymous Coward]

I have heard this is because, in Arabic, 6 is "ellah", which has obvious similarities to "Allah".

Wrong.

In Arabic the number 6 is pronounced "sitteh". If fact, there is no number pronounced anywhere close to "ellah" or "allah". The only two numbers from 1 to 10 that even start with a vowel are 4 (arba'a) and 10 ('ashrah). And because Arabic numbers follow a pattern, just like most languages, this rule holds (ie: 40 starts with a vowel, 400 starts with a vowel, etc).

Perhaps you're recalling this ( http://www.beholdthebeast.com/islam__quran_and_666.htm ) Christian propaganda?

So what if there SHOULD be, nobody will use it

[Gothmolly]

Why would you tell people you're censoring them, when you can just as easily NOT tell them and keep them in the dark... you know, to CENSOR them.

Re:So what if there SHOULD be, nobody will use it

[SuricouRaven]

Quite a lot, actually. Censorship isn't always entirely secret. Sometimes it can actually achieve great popular support, when the population believes that it is enforcing morality. I'd guess the biggest reason for faking an error rather than admitting censorship is actually accountability - it reduces the chance of detection should one of the list-editors screw up and block something innocent. Take the Virgin Killer incident - most ISPs served up a fake 404 error for that. If it'd been just a minor site, rather than wikipedia, it might never have been noticed.

Re:So what if there SHOULD be, nobody will use it

[Daetrin]

Because the people who are implementing the censorship are not the ones who mandated the censorship, and the goals of the two bodies may not be aligned.

In theory an ISP might want to return a "this has been censored" code in the case of anything where some outside entity forced them to censor the content so they can pass the blame on to someone else. I don't know if any ISP would actually care enough to bother implementing it, but it's certainly a possibility.

Re:So what if there SHOULD be, nobody will use it

[Sir_Sri]

Censorship need not be to hide the existence of information from the public, only restrict their access to it. The Chinese government is actively trying to hide the existence of the Tienanmen square massacre, and that's certain the form of censorship we think of most, but it's not all of it. The British government isn't hiding that the pirate bay exists, they are simply saying you aren't allowed to access it from within the UK. Pixelating porn or graphic violence isn't telling you that people don't have penises or their heads blown off it is done because seeing it could (according to the censor) be damaging to you.

For the british government a 'censorship' code makes a lot of sense. "You are attempting to access material forbidden to persons within the UK, for information on why this information is blocked click here'. The same could be said for much of the 'morality' police in the middle east. "This site contains blasphemous material and to protect you from its content we are preventing your access, this helpful message brought to you by the police of vice and virtue'. In fact in those cases a censorship status code would be an indication that the bureaucracy is doing the job it is tasked with doing, and something they can point to as places they have blocked.

In the same way your anti phishing filter might be censoring you from some malicious website, they're quite happy to tell you that you've been blocked from that site, because you've actually asked them to censor it for you. The government in the UK especially, was asked by the public who voted them into office to make decisions, including censoring material (as that is a government power) in their best interests.

The UK government through the film classification board censors films and games, or it used to until some of that power was transfered to the EU. What criteria they used for censorship wasn't a secret, and they even had processes for appeals and re-evaluations if you felt like the censorship was unfair. Everyone knew what they were doing, because that was their mandate, rate films, restrict access to them, and prevent harmful material from getting into the UK. Website censorship isn't fundamentally any different, by 'importing' a banned film from the US or france or whatever you were doing the mail order equivalent of changing your DNS provider. The fact that the legal situation in the UK hasn't caught up to DNS providers yet doesn't mean it won't.

Re:So what if there SHOULD be, nobody will use it

[Anonymous Coward]

In practice, an ISP has complete control over what they return in this situation.

The Used could be redirected to the EFF.org or to the official legislation that forbade access, or one might be redirected to the homepage of a list of proxy services. If it were me in charge and I wanted to provide a public service befitting the mythical status of the benign ISP, I'd set up a simple HTML page including all of the above with a disclaimer stating that my company took a neutral position on the question of support for the newly minted Ministry of Information, and I'd include a link to Terry Gilliam's, Brazil, as well as Marshall McCluhan's official website.

 

It's all in the point of view!

[__aaltlg1547]

In a normal person's point of view, the user has not erred. The government has erred, and HTTP has no provision for that.

From the government's point of view, the user has erred because no right-thinking user would want to access a proscribed IP.

So what it comes down to is, should HTTP represent the user's POV or the Government's?

Re:It's all in the point of view!

[Luke727]

So what it comes down to is, should HTTP represent the user's POV or the Government's?

Neither. HTTP deals with clients and servers, not users and governments. Political issues are rightfully outside of its scope.

As for the error code, 403 (Forbidden) is described as "The server understood the request, but is refusing to fulfill it". Is this not technically accurate?

Re:It's all in the point of view!

[next_ghost]

As for the error code, 403 (Forbidden) is described as "The server understood the request, but is refusing to fulfill it". Is this not technically accurate?

It's not accurate because the server didn't even recieve the request. The request was intercepted in transit and blocked by third party.

Re:It's all in the point of view!

[nabsltd]

It's not accurate because the server didn't even recieve the request. The request was intercepted in transit and blocked by third party.

The "502 Bad Gateway" seems to be the correct code for the behavior. The definition may not be 100% accurate in that it implies the proxy (which is what this censorship is) actually received a reply from the target server.

It would be quite funny if an ISP set the following response:
305 Use Proxy
Location: https://tpb.pirateparty.org.uk/

Easy

[Anonymous Coward]

Error 1984 - This site has been blocked due to government censorship

Re:Easy

[Narnie]

Agree, but the status should be " 1984 - SITE DBL PLUS BAD -GOVMNT OVRSITE"

Re:Easy

[KTheorem]

I think that should be "1984—Site Doubleplus Ungood - Minitrue"

HTTP 451

[IonOtter]

I nominate HTTP 451 - Site is not permitted in your country.

Re:HTTP 451

[lightknight]

I nominate '703 - Your government is being a twat.'

Some others:
701 - Your ISP is being a twat.
702 - Your organization is being a twat.
704 - Your ISP is being a twat, and has messed with your DNS request, sending you to a spamvertizement for the domain requested.
705 - Your ISP is throttling / packet shaping the living hell out of your connection.
706 - Variant HTML requested (mobile, Flash-free....lots of flags in here).
707 - The current server time (in ticks since the epoch) & the server's time zone.

Re:HTTP 451

[xeno]

Mod parent up. This is brilliant, probably the best thing I've seen on /. in years. Following Bradbury's theme, how about.....

HTTP 451: An error in your society has prevented your client from receiving the specified content.

(And I love the fact that HTTP 450 paves the way for this.)

Stop.

[mikkelm]

None. If a site absolutely must be blocked, then blackhole its IP addresses and fail resolution on the ISP's DNS servers. Middleboxes that inspect layer 4 and above are never OK, and never part of a trustworthy ISP network unless explicitly requested by the end-user.

Re:Stop.

[SuricouRaven]

Not so easy. One IP may host many, many websites. Usually the budget ones, that don't justify dedicating an entire server. So they all get to share one address, just different vhosts. Simple IP blocking would often block additional sites, not just the one targetted.

Thailand

[FRiC]

Thailand used to have a huge graphical image on a special server for censored websites. Any access on a censored URL would be forwarrded to that image. Apparently the load was so high the server would constantly crash, and eventually they deleted the image, so you get a 404 error. Now they got smarter and just display a text message telling you the website is censored by the government.

China Does It

[tobiah]

Many of the services/messages blocked in China come with explicit warnings that they have attempted something illegal. And some don't.

Re:Exactly

[Samantha Wright]

Here's the rest of the list for those looking to be similarly innovative. Personally, I vote for 418.9: Government is a tinpot.

Fahrenheit 451

[warewolfsmith]

HTTP 451, This site has been burnt.

How about using HTTP 101?

[Cornwallis]

In honor of Room 101.

Re:How about using HTTP 101?

[FriendlyStatistician]

101 already exists, and means switching protocols. The 1xx series in general is inappropriate.

Microsoft already used 450 as a censorship status code (for censored by Microsoft Parental Controls), so I think 451--with a nod to Ray Bradbury--would be appropriate.

Redirect to a page...

[John Hasler]

..that explains the situation and encourages the user to click on a clicky that automatically files a complaint with the approporiate government agency and/or sends an email to the relevant minister. Should be maintained by a third party such as the EFF.

It's the way you did it.

[michaelmalak]

This reminds me of the common quarrel, "It's not that you cheated on me, it's the way you did it, that you lied about it."

Re:Does HTTP allow 3 character numbers?

[Anonymous Coward]

THERE ARE FIVE CHARACTERS!

There already is an HTTP code

[Mozai]

The proper one would be in the 5xx range, since the client's request is correct but the server is unable to comply.

503 - Service Unavailable is the obvious choice.

If we want to be cheeky about it, we could respond 305 - Use Proxy to hint that the client making the request can't come through here and must use some other path.

Brilliant!

[lahm]

Sounds like a plan. http://antarctica.coldhorizon.com/451.html

Re:**A** HTTP Status Code For Censorship?

[YttriumOxide]

Why? The H isn't silent, is it?

Getting wildly offtopic, but I often have this conversation at work (speaking English in a country of mostly non-native English speakers) when I talk about "An MFP". They often ask me why I don't say "A MFP" instead.

The reasoning is that the "a" vs "an" is applied on pronunciation, not on spelling. When the next SOUND starts with a vowel, you use "an", otherwise you use "a".
So, "An em-eff-pee" and "An aitch-tee-tee-pee" are correct.

Confusion can arise when in some cases some people pronounce an acronym as a word, but others pronounce only the letters. I can't imagine this being an issue with HTTP (or MFP), but SQL does immediately spring to mind. The written phrase "A SQL Server" should be read as "A sequel server"; whereas the written phrase "An SQL server" should be read as "An ess-kyoo-el server"

Outside of acronyms, your own dialect of English can also make a difference. In some dialects, the initial "H" on many words is dropped. Some dialects also drop it or pronounce it on specific words while all others follow a general rule. This leads to the "a hotel"/"an hotel" ("an 'otel") and "a herb"/"an herb" ("an 'erb") discussions that pop up from time to time.

So - pretty much like Washington?

[Kupfernigk]

Deprived of the hagiographics surrounding the first American rulers, the early American state was indeed basically an oligarchy. What's more, it has largely stayed one ever since. You could argue that the President combines the role of a Consul and the Public Tribune, while the business of government as a whole is conducted by influential oligarchs whose rule is carried out by a compliant Civil Service. Pretty much like "Republican" Roman Government, in fact.The Constitution is interpreted to suit the rich, and until the 1850s in much of the USA was considered compatible with slavery. From then on it was merely interpreted as compatible with denial of civil rights in part of the USA. My nephew's public school in Virginia wasn't desegregated till, almost unbelievably for a European, 1974.

Was the early USA an improvement on the UK? On the whole I'd say yes. But it is worth remembering that people like Paul Revere were, by the standards of the time, rich and important men.