A New HTTP Status Code for Legally-restricted Resources

http://www.tbray.org/tmp/draft-tbray-http-legally-restricted-status.html

by adestefan • 14 years ago

24 6 14 years ago

tbray.org

bcn• 14 years ago

In case you're wondering why it's 451... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fahrenheit_451

citricsquid• 14 years ago

What are the chances of this being "accepted" and existing?

Also further to this how frequently are new HTTP Status Codes proposed like this and what percentage are/aren't "accepted"? Not sure if I should add it to http://httpstatus.es or not (with some sort of "proposed" signal)

mindcrime• 14 years ago

Thanks also to Ray Bradbury.

How very, very appropriate. I suspect Mr. Bradbury would approve, and this will stand a nice tribute to his influence.

drivingmenuts• 14 years ago

451 implies an error on the client side, when the client has done nothing wrong. To an extent, neither has the server, so this probably better falls into the 300 category.

451 is OK for propaganda purposes, but will people outside of North America and the UK understand the context?

kennu• 14 years ago

I don't think the protocol cares that much about who made the error. It's more about whether the client should retry the same unmodified request again or not. Using a 4xx series error code indicates that it shouldn't, using a 5xx series code indicates that it should.

Of course one can argue that censorship is only temporary and that actually it would make sense for clients to keep trying..

And yes people here in Finland understand the context.

pasbesoin• 14 years ago

Aside from the "statement" it makes, I think it is useful to identify responses that a resource provider might like to make but is not permitted to make (i.e. censorship).

Given the prevalence (editorial: "enormity") of censorship problems -- both current and pending -- being able to distinguish between them and other failures provides actionable information on a useful scale and frequency.

The particular response code proposed does make an elegantly concise and culturally cognizant statement -- something that RFC's are not entirely unknown for. The proposal is both practical and well-put, IMHO.

A New HTTP Status Code for Legally-restricted Resources

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