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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."
Until they block the 451 page and redirect it to a 404.
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According to the Wikipedia article on HTTP status codes 451 already exists for exactly this reason. This doesn't seem new.
They don't get it. The people who block your content in-line can send you back any page they choose, including a 404.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
... 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."
Can we make "200" mean that the gov't is watching your traffic? The nice part is that we don't have to change any of the installed base of webservers...
I would be strongly in favor of not having censored pages look like nonexistent or technically glitched pages, as there's nothing more insidious than silent censorship; but I have to wonder if an HTTP response code is the right tool for the job.
The various existing codes are not particularly granular, and an anti-censorship pressure scheme that has any hope of succeeding needs to be granular.
It doesn't help me if all I now is "Example.org is unavailable for legal reasons". I need to know what jurisidiction, what law, what court order(if any), what private actor (in the case of something like the DMCA), and ideally the asserted reason. Ideally, all that information would be properly marked up (not just a text blob) so that a browser could pretty-print it for the end user, a spider gathering statistics or scraping could gather statistics, and so forth.
You need to, as directly as possible, tie the entities responsible for the fact that you can't see the page to the message that you can't see the page. If you don't do that, people might generate some diffuse displeasure; but will have little way of knowing who is behind the problem.
What's the Curie temperature of an HDD platter's magnetic coating?
Actually, not so much. While most people assume 'Fahrenheit 451' is about censorship, Bradbury claimed it was really about TV replacing books. He even fought (unsuccessfully) to keep Michael Moore from using the title 'Fahrenheit 9/11' for his film.
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That's why embedding intelligence in your codes is a bad idea. Sometimes the world changes in ways that your original intelligence scheme did not anticipate. For example, what happens if you run out of codes that begin with 3? You're suddenly left with an intelligence system that is is either no longer able to meet your needs or no longer accurate.
I couldn't find your webpage, but dude, I totally found my stash!
(See also: hash error)
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
666: Blocked by your evil government. Move to a free country or fight for your right. Use it or lose it.
one of these threads.
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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.
how is it temporary? 404's have more chance of being temporary... unfortunately.
the block is an intentional permanent problem that doesn't go away without some human doing something.. much like many other 4xx states.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
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. ;-)
for bitching.
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Given that most of the western world censorship is stuff being lumbered onto ISPs as a legal requirement (at least, that was the aussie proposal), the error would be returned by the ISP's filtering software.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
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
Fahrenheit 451 is interesting, because contrary to what many believe it wasn't really about government censorship, and the culprit in the story isn't the state, but the people, and how they embraced apathy and lack of substance with watching TV over reading books.
For one thing, they're the same thing, as an apathetic electorate tolerates this sort of censorship. For another, a work means what it means, not what its author intended it to mean. Or does the law prevent death of the author from taking effect until 70 years after the literal death of the author?
They didn't just tolerate it, they actively caused it. Turning to mindless entertainment and shortened 'factoids' (that lack substance and depth) on TV. Bradbury saw the TV as an opiate. Only after people stopped reading did the state employ firemen to burn books.
I'd say make the message less harsh "Unavailable pending a regulatory review"
The problem is, the page isn't unavailabe pending a review. It's unavailable because a court has mandated that it be blocked or because a review has assessed it as containing illegal material.
I'd have have 451: Unavailable for Legal Reasons followed by "It's child porn" or "The cunts at the Premier League convinced a court to get a site hosting no illegal content blocked despite the site doing nothing wrong or illegal".
Nonetheless, the page is indeed unavailable for legal reasons.