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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.
Restore the madness of youth's lechery
According to the Wikipedia article on HTTP status codes 451 already exists for exactly this reason. This doesn't seem new.
... 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."
Maybe you don't get it. It's not a solution, it's a protest.
//TODO: signature
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.
Just because they're legally required to block the content, doesn't mean they agree with the block or want to do it. On the contrary, it would be more in the ISP's interest to show that they're being legally pushed to block the content rather than the content just appearing not to work.
It's not the government in many of these cases that's doing the actual blocking, it's ISPs where the people that have to install the filters are your typical slashdotter.
They don't get it. The people who block your content in-line can send you back any page they choose, including a 404.
Of course they can. The idea is that those doing the blocking have been forced to do so, and thus can use this alternate error page to distinguish these cases, and show their users how much of the internet they're missing due to government intervention.
A standard 404 could be legitimate, and isn't going to help garner any group support for open-ness.
By way of example, Youtube obviously complies with DMCA takedowns; because it would be ruinously risky not to; but they (sometimes to the displeasure of the takedown-demander) always note 'Video X has been removed because of a complaint from FooCorp Media'.
Unless a company is an enthusiastic partner in the censorship scheme, it isn't in their interest for their customers to think that they've fucked up or are deeply unreliable when they are acting on a legal demand.
Just because they're legally required to block the content, doesn't mean they agree with the block or want to do it. On the contrary, it would be more in the ISP's interest to show that they're being legally pushed to block the content rather than the content just appearing not to work.
It's not the government in many of these cases that's doing the actual blocking, it's ISPs where the people that have to install the filters are your typical slashdotter.
Except when they receive a National Security Letter they are not allowed to tell and doing so can result in your life being ruined by the government.
---Saying gnome 3 is better than windows 8 not so much a compliment as it is damning with light praise.
It was more than that. It was the books being replaced by the people own volition. The people allowed it, let it happen, and even condoned it. Which one could argued it exactly what is happening.
morcego
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.
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.
Oh, they're still watching. They just (hopefully) can't decrypt it.
I'm not allowed to tell you.
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. ;-)
I guess the average user probably wouldn't but who doesn't get the rather obvious reference to Fahrenheit 451 and the burning of books?
I think its probably the perfect symbolism, and even if most people don't get it now they will learn.
Blarney Quality Restaurant, Plants
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