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"451" Error Will Tell Users When Governments Are Blocking Websites
Daniel_Stuckey writes "To fend off the chilling effects of heavy-handed internet restriction, the UK consumer rights organization Open Rights Group wants to create a new version of the '404 Page Not Found' error message, called '451 unavailable,' to specify that a webpage wasn't simply not there, it was ordered to be blocked for legal reasons."
... shouldn't it be a 3xx or 5xx error code? 4xx means the client screwed up.
For those who missed the reference and didn't click the links, this is a reference to Fahrenheit 451.
Technoli
The idea has been floating around for a while. It's still brilliant in the simplicity and anti-censorship attitude of it. What the article doesn't mention is that its an IETF draft now. Wish the error could be something like "451 Bad Government".
If I visit www.thepiratebay.org on a browser that doesn't have an anti-censorship plugin installed, I get
"The page you're looking for has been blocked.
"We're complying with a court order that means access to this website has
"to be blocked to protect against copyright infringement."
I don't think that they understand the difference between the Internet and the Web. If an IP is blocked, no HTTP connection is made, and thus no HTTP response can be delivered.
This would instead put the burden of enforcing the block on the web servers themselves. Or are requests to blacklisted IPs rerouted?
Haha, "court order"!
You naive believer in due process.
Here in the UK, an unregulated quango called the Internet Watch Foundation can block anything it pleases with no judicial or even executive oversight whatsoever.
Showed up in Wikipedia around June 2012, references a draft specification from June 11 2012. So yeah its been around for over a year.
40X errors can still return an entity. The HTTP spec even says that the server SHOULD return an entity explaining the error. I'm afraid you're the one being a moron.
Just to clarify, if a web site is being blocked, then that web site can not send an error page to the client making the request.
The error would come from whichever device is blocking the web site, and it would prevent forwarding of any data packets to the blocked site. The blocked site can't return an error page because it has no way of knowing someone trying to access it was blocked. Whatever device is doing the blocking is the one that can send an error code, if at all.
Returning an html error page would be entirely optional, and I seriously doubt whomever is doing the blocking would give a rat's ass about a fancy custom error page. If they did, it might make for a nice amplifier in a DDoS attack. ;-)
As this is a total scam, why would they not assign 419 to it?
To Terminate, or not to Terminate, that's the question - SCSIROB
Close but no cigar, it's 451 as in Fahrenheit 451
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Shall we begin?