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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."

12 of 141 comments (clear)

  1. 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 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
  2. Re:451 by Moof123 · · Score: 5, Funny

    Should have been "Error 1984 Big Brother Disapproves"

  3. 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?
  4. Re:451 by radarskiy · · Score: 5, Funny

    451: Halt and Catch FIre

  5. 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.
  6. 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).

  7. 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.

  8. 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.

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

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

  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.