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HTTP Error Code 451 Approved For Censored Web Pages (mnot.net)

Posted by Soulskill on from the what-if-governments-start-censoring-error-codes dept.

An anonymous reader writes: The Internet Engineering Steering Group (IESG) has finally approved the new 451 status code for HTTP error messages involving web pages which have been repressed or removed for legal or political reasons. The initiative was proposed in 2013, and gained interest from various groups, such as Lumen (formerly Chilling Effects), who see the potential of the Bradbury-inspired code to help develop comprehensive indexes of censorship on the internet. Mark Nottingham, chair the IETF HTTP Working Group, says, "It'll be an RFC after some work by the RFC Editor and a few more process bits, but effectively you can start using it now."

90 of 141 comments (clear)

  1. 451 by pushing-robot · · Score: 2, Funny

    Censored

    --
    How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
    1. Re:451 by Moof123 · · Score: 5, Funny

      Should have been "Error 1984 Big Brother Disapproves"

    2. Re:451 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Read other comments. "451" is more appropriate for censorship; leave 1984 for tracking...

      BTW, if you didn't recognize 415, perhaps they've won. :-(

    3. Re:451 by keko · · Score: 1

      I assume this needs to be enforced at the ISP level or something. Nobody is going to return those 451s themselves. How long until we get a proxy-based search engine for all the censored content on the internet?

    4. Re:451 by radarskiy · · Score: 5, Funny

      451: Halt and Catch FIre

    5. Re:451 by radarskiy · · Score: 1

      Error 1984: Historical Inaccuracies Corrected

    6. Re:451 by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Arguably, the correct code for 1984-style censorship is either a 404 or a 200 that returns a page full of historically corrected and party approved content.

      The honest censor is the one who says "yup, this exists and you can't see it." The effective censor is the one who successfully conceals the existence of whatever they are trying to keep you away from.

    7. Re:451 by jfdavis668 · · Score: 1

      418: I'm a teapot

    8. Re:451 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Actually, search engines could start using it right now. The HTML they'd serve as the HTTP entity would say something like "I'd show you this page but some silly government requires it to be blocked because of a suspect bit of legal reasoning."

    9. Re:451 by HyperQuantum · · Score: 1

      404: Katniss Not Found

      --
      I am not really here right now.
    10. Re:451 by UnknownSoldier · · Score: 4, Interesting

      > How long until we get a proxy-based search engine for all the censored content on the internet?

      Don't we already have part of this?

      The problem is we still have idiots who think censorship is the solution. Censor is precisely part of the problem:

      Only cowards censor.

      Certain people censor they are too insecure to discuss something rationally and too afraid of other people's propaganda that they think ignoring the problem will make it go away.

      Ignoring a problem doesn't make it go away.

      While the 451 is a "cute" solution, it is not really address the root problem.

    11. Re:451 by omnichad · · Score: 1

      If you get a DMCA takedown notice for something you have the rights to, but not the money to defend yourself, you might return a 451 instead of a 404 when it's removed/hidden.

    12. Re:451 by keko · · Score: 1

      I know, I was wondering who's going to enforce it and how.

      If you can force someone to configure his own Apache to return 451s through legal action, yes, you won't need ISPs.

      But if you can't legally force the site owner to do so? At some point it'll go the Pirate Bay route, judges asking ISPs to return those codes, something that may be achieved by some DNS/proxy/redirect trickery (for that specific ISP customer anyway)

      For site owners, keeping things working to serve a "You are not legally allowed to see this page" response, as opposed to just completely shut things down (if you can't fight back in court) sounds like a scenario that needs a reality check.

    13. Re:451 by keko · · Score: 1

      Depends on the context, I guess. You can just shut the offending content down.

      How is Google going to treat index scores in websites with 451s? Most people may want it completely removed without a trace.

    14. Re:451 by omnichad · · Score: 1

      Google generally supports the reporting of censorship - even their own web search results include links to chillingeffects.org when a search result is removed due to a DMCA request. It's likely that they would increase the rank of web sites being transparent about censorship.

      Shutting the offending content down normally returns 404. You can still display the same 404-style error page but with a 451 HTTP header, or you can provide details on the removal of the content. It doesn't really matter as the content of the page is not really specified by the RFC.

      Most people may want it completely removed without a trace.

      When you say "most people" I don't know if you mean the offended party under the DMCA or the content poster or the web site whose page was infringing. There is no action available under the DMCA to require it to appear as if the page never existed - just to remove the actual offending content. Depends on if it's a site acting within its safe harbor provision or if it's a site that posted the content itself.

      Right now, Youtube doesn't even give a 404. They give a HTTP 200 response when showing the "This video is unavailable" page. Because they want to acknowledge that the content was there and that it had been a valid link at one time.

    15. Re:451 by keko · · Score: 1

      Maybe you're right, if every player sticks to the spec rules for this. Sticking to the rules and censorship usually don't go together, though.

    16. Re:451 by Pseudonym · · Score: 1

      Only cowards censor.

      I am a proud coward and I resent that remark.

      --
      sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f(q{sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f});
    17. Re:451 by Ash-Fox · · Score: 1

      Only cowards censor.

      I'm not a coward, I just don't like seeing spam posts.

      --
      Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
    18. Re:451 by doccus · · Score: 1

      What kind of sick sense of humor could they have to actually approve 451 as the code? It's like acknowledging that it'a repressive censorship and yet boasting about it at the same time...

    19. Re:451 by doccus · · Score: 1

      The effective censor is the one who successfully conceals the existence of whatever they are trying to keep you away from.

      Yup there's a lot of that about.. or not ;-) Hard to tell. Problem is you can't just google "stuff they're not telling me and not letting me know even exists". Weapons research is a perfect example. They don't just hide how these ultra advanced directed energy devices etc. work.. they hide their very existence. From us.. that is.. the citizens. Certainly not from the other side. They meake absolutely SURE that the enemy knows about their existence. Not much deterrant factor otherwise.But can't let the populace know that we're all a hair trigger away from complete obliteration. Talk about a vote loser (!)

    20. Re:451 by kmoser · · Score: 1

      Actually, search engines could start using it right now. The HTML they'd serve as the HTTP entity would say something like "I'd show you this page but some silly government requires it to be blocked because of a suspect bit of legal reasoning."

      If they really had a conscience, they'd serve the error code along with the actual blocked content, and let the user-agent simply decline to show it.

  2. We should differentiate between the two by deodiaus2 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Use 451 for legal reasons,
    Use code 452 for political ones.
    And a citation of what particular stature is being offended.

    1. Re:We should differentiate between the two by fustakrakich · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Law is political

      --
      “He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
    2. Re:We should differentiate between the two by Penguinisto · · Score: 2

      Law is political

      I believe GP was wanting to differentiate between stuff that's banned by law for obvious reasons (child pr0n, malware, etc), and stuff that's banned by a legal body due to purely political/speech reasons (e.g. calling one's national governmental leader a poop-eating doody-head).

      --
      Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
    3. Re:We should differentiate between the two by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      That is pointless. For those cases governments do not want information revealed, the censorship demand will come with a gag order forbidding to even tell that it is being censored. In these cases this code cannot be used.

      Therefor such a code only has value in a state based on justice and integrity where the rule of law is generally accepted and respected. Ironically this is a state least likely in need of such a code.

    4. Re:We should differentiate between the two by pushing-robot · · Score: 1

      I would set the HTTP response's ETag to the offending content ROT13'd, but that's just me.

      --
      How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
    5. Re:We should differentiate between the two by Moof123 · · Score: 1

      Error DMCA

    6. Re:We should differentiate between the two by Penguinisto · · Score: 1

      What makes a reason obvious and what makes it arbitrary?

      Good point... It's hard to find the right words sometimes, but let's say that the former code would be for things that cause harm (and are therefore against the law), whereas the latter is the shutting down of a contrary opinion.

      --
      Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
    7. Re:We should differentiate between the two by Opportunist · · Score: 1

      You are aware that contrary opinions are harmful in the heads of oppressive regimes, yes?

      --
      We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
    8. Re: We should differentiate between the two by donscarletti · · Score: 4, Insightful

      No, you and he are making the distinction between laws that you like and laws that you don't like.

      I agree that many laws, like the laws against child porn and malware are good. However if we tolerate the notion that these are not political issues since they are stemming from the natural order of things, then we must tolerate that to others, that the list of natural apolitical issues may be broader than they are to you and banning other things is not a political issue either. There is not a regime on earth that bans things that it does not consider harmful to the people. Remember that.

      --
      When Argumentum ad Hominem falls short, try Argumentum ad Matrem
    9. Re:We should differentiate between the two by Penguinisto · · Score: 1

      In a way, but c'mon, that's splitting hairs. When I used the term 'harm', I mean actual abuse of an individual or group thereof, not political contrivance.

      --
      Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
    10. Re:We should differentiate between the two by Opportunist · · Score: 1

      What exactly is the difference? What is "hate speech"? What is "introducing ideas that cause unrest and dissent"? And most of all, who gets to determine it?

      Your values are not necessarily those of others on this planet.

      --
      We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
    11. Re: We should differentiate between the two by rocket+rancher · · Score: 1

      There is not a regime on earth that bans things that it does not consider harmful to the people. Remember that.

      False. In the US, for example, bans can and are enacted when local governments decide that something needs to be banned, even though the federal government says it shall not be. Case in point: Abortion. The federal government decided in Roe v. Wade that a woman's right to opt for an abortion is protected, meaning that the procedure cannot be banned at the state level. Yet it is effectively banned in most states of the former Confederacy, because those state legislatures enacted laws making it practically impossible for abortion providers to practice, thus effectively banning abortions in those states. Thwok, ball's in your court.

    12. Re: We should differentiate between the two by donscarletti · · Score: 1

      Southern regimes consider abortion to be harmful to fetus (or as they would say: baby), woman and society. Thus, no-matter what federal courts say, they will do their darnedest to ban it. Federal rulings do have effect on the state level, but states still more or less rule themselves as they see fit (as per the US constitution). Thus, southern states are regimes that only ban things that they consider harmful to the people.

      I thought someone might bring up something like North Korea. But Dixie? Too easy!

      --
      When Argumentum ad Hominem falls short, try Argumentum ad Matrem
    13. Re:We should differentiate between the two by bentcd · · Score: 1

      The distinction can't really be drawn. In Germany it is considered harmful to deny the Holocaust to the extent that it's illegal to do so. If a German Google employee is left to decide whether such a ban is 451 or 452 he will likely conclude differently than a US Google employee would.

      And of course, child porn means different things in different countries. In some places, someone drawing a basic stick figure and writing underneath "naked child" may be guilty of creating child porn. How obviously harmful is that drawing to anyone? Would blocking it be a ban on political speech? How realistic must the drawing be before it's "reasonable" to ban it?

      --
      sigs are hazardous to your health
  3. Next 205 by ls671 · · Score: 1

    Next HTTP status 205: Present, but spam, trojan or other irrelevant content.

    --
    Everything I write is lies, read between the lines.
    1. Re:Next 205 by pushing-robot · · Score: 1

      I filter those out at layer 3.

      --
      How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
  4. christ who cares. by nimbius · · Score: 2, Interesting
    not since the april fools teapot code has something so silly been proposed. from TFA:

    the 403 status code says "Forbidden", but it doesn't say "I can't show you that for legal reasons."

    because 403 is relaying constraints affected upon the target site path from the browsers configuration. "I cant show you that for legal reasons" is explained by blogs, chilling effects, boingboing, twitter, email, mailing lists, and sometimes even slashdot. keep your social web bullshit out of my nginx. all this code does is afford one more excuse for the user to stop investigating why or how this site was blocked. the new code isnt a redirect to information, and conveys nothing meaningful outside of boilerplating.

    By its nature, you can't guarantee that all attempts to censor content will be conveniently labeled by the censor.

    thats right. multinational corporations that dont want you reading about salmonella outbreaks and exploding recalls will not use 451. they will purchase an abundance of airtime on $news-website and then threaten any evidence of coverage with bankrupting the site. additionally your government isnt about to 451 your favourite e-zine that exposes the secret torture prison in cuba, theyll just null route that traffic. the FBI just hijacks your DNS and points it to their boilerplate eagle and shield jpg designed by a bureaucrat with all the comprehension of internet censorship as a four year old. Did your favourite website just get a gag order and secret court warrant? that sorry, 451 isnt going to show up because it would violate the conditions of the gag order. 451 is as useless as do not track, but social justice warriors love it.

    --
    Good people go to bed earlier.
    1. Re:christ who cares. by AmiMoJo · · Score: 1

      It's more a statement that censorship of this nature if considered and error condition, than a useful response code.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
  5. Too bad 101 is already in use by Errol+backfiring · · Score: 2

    Too bad 101 (Switching Protocols) is already in use.

    101 OK, And Big Brother Is Watching You Would have been a nice one as well.

    --
    Nae king! Nae laird! Nae yurrupiean pressedent! We willna be fooled again!
  6. Re:i have a better idea. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    The quote is remembered well. Actually, he was talking about Usenet, not Internet in general.

    For this to work with Web, Web must become more like Usenet. Replicating messages in a peer-to-peer manner, redundantly, so that there's no single weakest link to hit. The only way to censor a message, then, is to nuke the planet from orbit.

  7. The harder they close their fist by Lord+Apathy · · Score: 1

    The tighter they close their fist the more webpages will slip from their grasp.

    Or something like that.

    --

    Supporting World Peace Through Nuclear Pacification

  8. Re:Getting the reference... by nucrash · · Score: 1

    I actually caught that shortly into reading the description. Felt a bit burned to find out they accepted this.

    Fiction becoming reality is scary when involving dystopian novels. Here I was oping for a bit more of an optimistic view of the future.

    --
    Place something witty here
  9. Re:A nod to Ray Bradbury by Moof123 · · Score: 2

    Except he predicted giant screens on the walls that people obsessively watched. We instead obsessively watch tiny screens that go with us everywhere.

  10. Play ball with Hitler... by MobSwatter · · Score: 1

    It is one thing for 'the man' to try and strangle society over being power hungry and a particularly foul individual that has difficulty qualifying as a human being, but for the dev's to play ball with this sickness by building framework is an outrage. Perhaps this is another 'gift' afforded by the H1B?

  11. huh? by Virtucon · · Score: 2

    who see the potential of the Bradbury-inspired code to help develop comprehensive indexes of censorship on the internet

    So if I want to censor you and not have it tracked I'll just give you a 403 or a 500. Which is pretty much how it works now. This won't allow anybody to truly see how much censorship there is. What a waste of intellectual bandwidth.

    --
    Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
    1. Re:huh? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      The point of this code is that it's a signal from the ISP or website holder to the user saying 'I'm sorry, I can't dish out this page because the government/corporation/the Bavarian Illuminati won't let me'.

    2. Re:huh? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

      So if I want to censor you and not have it tracked I'll just give you a 403 or a 500. Which is pretty much how it works now. This won't allow anybody to truly see how much censorship there is. What a waste of intellectual bandwidth.

      This is a wrong headed idea of how HTTP works. You make a request to a server and you get a response. One way of handling content removed because of censoring is to let it return 403, 404, or 500 or various other codes. By having a code that allows the server operator to return a code specifying that the content is censored we have some other things that can come into play. A user may have a proxy that would allow them past the censorship. A user may have an appeal process to learn why the content is censored and if the censor order can be rescinded. If the current error codes are returned, the user is never sure if it is censored, a badly run web site, or an old and stale link. If your goal is to hide the fact that you are performing any censoring, then you may still return error codes other than 451 without breaking the standards.

      In a practical use-case, US jurisdictions have a DMCA take-down request. Instead of returning some other error, they may now return 451 to let people know that the site was specifically requested through legal channels to not show that. In the US, it is not illegal to submit the request or let the users know why they cannot access the content.

    3. Re:huh? by Opportunist · · Score: 1

      Hush! Politicians just may be dumb enough to say "good idea, let's use it!"

      --
      We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
  12. Re:i have a better idea. by Penguinisto · · Score: 4, Interesting

    How about instead of a special code to indicate when a page has been censored, we just, you know, refuse to censor it in the first place?

    Agreed - though I think this proposal is part of doing just this, at least as a form of protest.

    After all, maybe your government clamps down and demands you shut down a page -or else. So, to keep your employees out of prison, you slap on a code 451 (love the number, BTW), and then perhaps you try and get sneaky and stick a link underneath it that says "please refer to your search engine for alternate locations of {content title/keywords, etc}" (or similar - enough to give the content away, but just on this side of keeping the government from arresting you).

    --
    Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
  13. Re:i have a better idea. by yeupou · · Score: 1

    => http://urlhosted.graphicore.de...

  14. So much for the Internet by kheldan · · Score: 2

    I've been suspecting for quite some time now, but something like this makes it fairly obvious to me: The Internet is well on it's way to being more or less destroyed. I wouldn't at all be surprised if in the next 10 years or so, it gets literally fragmented to the point where it's just the 'U.S. Internet', and the 'PRC Internet', and the 'E.U. Internet', and the 'U.K. Internet', and so on, with no interconnection between the disparate networks, and before too much longer than that, no interoperability between them anyway. Oh well, it was fun while it lasted.

    --
    Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
    1. Re:So much for the Internet by Locke2005 · · Score: 1

      It's not going to be destroyed, it's going to fragment An anonymous network full of crap, a trust network that requires positive ID to post anything, a pay-to-play network with much higher bandwidth, etc. The darknet already exists, doesn't it? The internet becomes a William Gibson-esque dystopian future, but it doesn't go away. Isolationism is the inevitable future, whether due to infectious disease or terrorism, it's going to happen. Enjoy the everyone-to-everyone connection you have now, while you still can.

      --
      I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
    2. Re:So much for the Internet by kheldan · · Score: 1

      It's not going to be destroyed, it's going to fragment

      That's my entire point; 'fragmenting' == 'destoying it'.

      Enjoy the everyone-to-everyone connection you have now, while you still can.

      I don't have that; so-called 'social media' is one of the aggressive cancers that is killing the Internet, and I refuse to participate in the destruction of something that once was beautiful.

      The darknet already exists, doesn't it?

      Sure it does.. for now. Like Tor, it only exists because the powers-that-be allow it to exist, for their own purposes; once those purposes become obsolete, Tor will become anathema, and anyone using it will be considered a criminal.

      Want some advice, friend? Vote for any public library funding bills that come along, so long as it means that public libraries continue to exist, and continue to be stocked with printed paper books. Some time in the future we may need to fall back to those as a source of knowledge.

      --
      Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
    3. Re:So much for the Internet by mrchaotica · · Score: 1

      I think you mean the "Facebook internet" and the "Google internet" and the "Microsoft Internet" and the "Baidu internet." All the companies want the Internet to turn into Cable TV 2.0, with them in control.

      --

      "[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz

    4. Re:So much for the Internet by kheldan · · Score: 1

      Maybe. And just like when it was AOL and all the other 'walled gardens' back in the day, I'll just ignore it and move on to something else. Maybe there'll be a grass-roots movement to start a wireless mesh network, and anyone who wanted the Internet to remain what it was originally will move to that instead. Maybe it'll all just become a useless, tangled mess of a walled garden like you imply, and I'll just walk away from it and go read more books instead, or (gasp, scandalous!) actually talk to more people, live and in person, instead of having 'internet friends' (which I personally don't do, social media is utter crap and a cancer). Maybe we'll all be forced to worship Allah before any of that happens, or have our heads cut off on YouTube. Maybe space aliens will land and reveal to us that their ancestors are our real creators, and force everyone to worship them, and nothing will matter anymore because we'll all be in chains. Who the hell even knows? I just want to live out what's left of my life in relative peace and try to have some fun while it's still possible to do so.

      --
      Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
  15. you thinking of406? 403 anything but auth, accept by raymorris · · Score: 2

    > because 403 is relaying constraints affected upon the target site path from the -browsers configuration-

    Are you thinking of 406, which indicates the client (browser) configuration wouldn't accept the response?

    403 is access denied for -any- reason other than authentication failure. It could be the resource is only available 9:00 - 5:00 (business hours), it could be restricted by IP address, it could be available only to the 93rd caller. The server explicitly is not required to indicate why access has denied; meaning you don't know if changing the browser configuration would have any effect or not.

    http://www.w3.org/Protocols/rf...

  16. Fahrenheit 451 by Locke2005 · · Score: 3, Funny

    Obvious Ray Bradbury tribute is obvious. Ray was a great author, he deserves it.

    --
    I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
    1. Re:Fahrenheit 451 by allo · · Score: 1

      Before you mentioned it, nobody of us got the joke. THANK YOU!

  17. What about proxies? by MobyDisk · · Score: 1

    Could we use this when my local corporate firewall blocks a page? It would be great if apps recognized that. Sometimes, an application goes to download a file or register something, and instead of getting a file with the expected result, it gets back HTML with something like "This page was blocked... click OK to accept and continue" which obviously the application doesn't know to do. But if it got a 451, I can at least know what happened and possibly do something about it.

    1. Re:What about proxies? by allo · · Score: 1

      Return 305 instead.

    2. Re:What about proxies? by MobyDisk · · Score: 1

      Not sure how 305 is relevant. 305 instructs the browser to use the proxy. In my scenario, the browser is already using the proxy.

  18. Ironically... by Etcetera · · Score: 3, Insightful

    This appropriateness of this code is based around an interpretation of the novel that the creator doesn't share:

    “Useless,” Bradbury says. “They stuff you with so much useless information, you feel full.” He bristles when others tell him what his stories mean, and once walked out of a class at UCLA where students insisted his book was about government censorship. He’s now bucking the widespread conventional wisdom with a video clip on his Web site (http://www.raybradbury.com/at_home_clips.html), titled “Bradbury on censorship/television.

    http://www.laweekly.com/news/r...

    --
    Hire a Linux system administrator, systems engineer,
    1. Re:Ironically... by Moof123 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I read the article you linked, and frankly it left me scratching my head. I think he managed to write a book about censorship unintentionally, as it was the only way to get to his real point about the perils of television. When I read the book I found the whole picture walls thing to be secondary rather than primary. Maybe he pulled a Homer?

      It would be like finding Orwell's diary and finding out he thought 1984 was about the perils of video cameras rather than government control, propaganda, and surveillance (to badly simplify).

  19. Original proposal by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Terence Eden's Blog There is no HTTP code for censorship (but perhaps there should be) where Tim Bray announced the Internet-Draft proposal.

    I hope that they finally amend it to include the
    451 Unavailable for Legal Reasons of Resource magnet:?xt=urn:ed2k:354B15E68FB8F36D7CD88FF94116CDC1&xl=10826029

    XD

  20. How long does it take for a new status code? by WaffleMonster · · Score: 2

    Remember seeing this back at the beginning of 2013. Why does it take three years for one single solitary status code to be "approved"? There sure as heck was not continuous ongoing work or discussion commensurate with the delay.

    I often get the distinct impression nobody including authors actually care about documents they are working on.

  21. So let me get this straight . . . by mmell · · Score: 1
    After my local Gubberment uses their version of lead-pipe cryptography to convince me that I should take down a website (as opposed to an all-expense paid vacation at the local PITA joint), do I really believe I can get away with putting up a marker that says "Not my fault - they made me!"

    Isn't this the same brand of crap as asking website managers to implement a web canary in their HTML? I thought we'd all already discussed that here and concluded that as wonderful as it sounds, it also sounds like a great way to end up in a reeducation camp somewhere.

  22. 4xx are for user error, 5xx is for sever error by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Using a 4xx response says that it's the requester's fault for making a bad request. It should be a 5xx error because the provider is at fault for withholding information.

    1. Re:4xx are for user error, 5xx is for sever error by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      It is the requestor's fault that they looked for censored data. Their request was "bad" but a few weeks at a reeducation facility should help.

    2. Re:4xx are for user error, 5xx is for sever error by 91degrees · · Score: 1

      Perhaps, but 410 (gone) and 403 (forbidden) are similar in nature.

      Mainly though, it's because people like the Ray Bradbury reference.

    3. Re:4xx are for user error, 5xx is for sever error by omnichad · · Score: 1

      Compare to 404. It's not found - the user did go to an invalid address. It's just that 451 is a little more specific on why it's not found.

    4. Re:4xx are for user error, 5xx is for sever error by GuB-42 · · Score: 1

      This is a user error in a sense that the server is perfectly configured and the user agent (the browser) asked for a resource that it isn't allowed to access.
      A 5xx means that something is not working as intended on the server (software bug, network problem, unsupported feature,...).
      The distinction is a purely technical one between a http client and a http server. Not between a human user and provider.

      It is the same reason why you get a 404 when your browser follows a dead link. At a human level, the provider is at fault, however at the http level the client is at fault for asking something that doesn't exist.

    5. Re:4xx are for user error, 5xx is for sever error by Gavagai80 · · Score: 1

      That may be the theory. In practice, the majority of 403 errors you'll encounter are due to server software bugs creating permissions problems.

      --
      This space intentionally left blank
    6. Re:4xx are for user error, 5xx is for sever error by allo · · Score: 1

      nope. Typing the wrong url is your fault.

    7. Re:4xx are for user error, 5xx is for sever error by allo · · Score: 1

      410 is similiar, because you cannot know it. 403 is just correct, because you could probably know, if you're allowed to access something. i.e. /cgi-bin/ should be known to be inaccessible.

      OTOH you're not obliged to know, whats censored. It's even the other way round, most governments want you not to know, what's censored. So it's not your error to access the ressource.

    8. Re:4xx are for user error, 5xx is for sever error by omnichad · · Score: 1

      Not if the URL used to be valid but no longer exists (Hey, just like 451). Technically, 410 is more correct, but 404 is what's used in common practice.

    9. Re:4xx are for user error, 5xx is for sever error by SuiteSisterMary · · Score: 1

      Isn't it more along the lines of '4xx: it's a feature' and '5xx: it's a bug?'

      Besides, this is just an extension of '403 Forbidden.'

      --
      Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
    10. Re:4xx are for user error, 5xx is for sever error by allo · · Score: 1

      yeah, no longer available would be 410, where the 4 is kind of wrong. It should be more like 2xx with the information "correct, but gone".

    11. Re: 4xx are for user error, 5xx is for sever error by omnichad · · Score: 1

      Oh. Now I get it. Your brand of linguistic pedantry doesn't even accept the RFC, even while trying to use their numbering scheme. You're over-simplifying 4xx a bit if you say it's just "user error."

      2xx is used when the client's request was successfully received, understood, and accepted.. In the case of a missing page, only the first two of the three are satisfied. You can't accept a request and successfully respond if the content is not there. Success is defined by the retrieval of the content, not the state of the transport.

      4xx means the clientmay have erred (which is true in the sense that what they want isn't possible and they could possibly have known that in advance). Which is an acceptable assumption. Otherwise most of 4xx is entirely useless.

    12. Re: 4xx are for user error, 5xx is for sever error by allo · · Score: 1

      Personally i think 410 does not fit both 4 and 5. 2 would be an option in the sence, as it was received and understood (no question?) and accepted (but with the response "nothing here anymore"). But it does not fit the intention, that the client wanted to retrieve something and failed in it.

      Put it another way: If the client says "give me the contents of this box", is giving him nothing when the box is empty an "Okay" response, but he is probably not satisfied with it.

    13. Re: 4xx are for user error, 5xx is for sever error by omnichad · · Score: 1

      You're missing what their definition of "accepted" is. And it is entirely based around whether the content retrieval is successful. Otherwise, you really have almost no use for 4xx at all.

  23. Re: i have a better idea. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Or it could be true if nerds bothered to look at what other nerds are actually doing before criticizing!

    "Error 451 pages would include all the key information about the blocking order including links to the relevant court order, how to challenge the block and the law allowing the court to block websites in that country...451 Unavailable aims to be a repository for the legal documents that should be included on Error 451 pages and to provide legal analysis of those documents."

    This is exactly how you route around censorship, particularly when you realize that political and legal fights are as valuable as pure technological ones.

  24. Obligatory by U2xhc2hkb3QgU3Vja3M · · Score: 2

    A lot of comments have referenced about it but nobody's linked to it yet:
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

  25. Shouldn't the server indicate the block scope? by Nicopa · · Score: 1

    I think it would be useful to also specify a header with thich the server (or proxy) can tell the user agent the scope of the block. Mainly so that the user can know it the block can be circunvented by using a proxy or not.

  26. This is reference to Fahrenheit 451 by sinij · · Score: 3, Funny

    Ray Bradbury Fahrenheit 451 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

  27. Re:i have a better idea. by malditaenvidia · · Score: 2

    I'd settle for ISPs just giving usenet access along with the internet service like they used to do.

  28. You mean kill the canary? by mmell · · Score: 1

    Just askin'.

    1. Re:You mean kill the canary? by omnichad · · Score: 1

      This isn't going to do anything for a National Security Letter or anything along those lines. Returning 451 might be subtle but it definitely won't get you out of trouble if it's discovered - so it's in no way a true canary. The only safe canary is something where inaction reveals that something was compromised. This is for when you're allowed to tell the visitor exactly why. And it also standardizes reporting in such a way that automated tools connecting to the content can make an intelligent decision on how to handle the error.

      So maybe when Google indexes the 451 error page, they can keep the keywords cached so that the URL is still returned for the same searches. As it is, when Google gets a DMCA takedown for a search result linking to infringing content, they display an error message. If something like 451 is standardized, they could report takedowns/censorships in search results where they themselves weren't involved in the removal of the content.

  29. Censorship by Damouze · · Score: 1

    Censorship, or rather, repression of information of any kind is a danger to freedom and therefore a danger to our civilized society. It always reminds me of one of the quotes in SMAC:

    "As the Americans learned so painfully in Earth's final century, free flow of information is the only safeguard against tyranny. The once-chained people whose leaders at last lose their grip on information flow will soon burst with freedom and vitality, but the free nation gradually constricting its grip on public discourse has begun its rapid slide into despotism. Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master. "

    True in the game, but true in real life as well.

    --
    And on the Eighth Day, Man created God.
  30. 4xx is wrong by allo · · Score: 1

    4xx means client error. 5xx means server error. we need 6xx for government error.