New HTTP 451 Error to Indicate Government Blocking/Internet Censorship

[Centurius]

 

Originally proposed in 2013 the Internet Engineering Task Force(IETF) has now approved the use of error 451 to indicate a page has been taken down for legal reasons where previously only 404(not found) and 403(forbidden) could really be used. The goal is to be more transparent about internet censorship as well as making instances of it machine readable. The 451 number is most likely a reference to the novel Fahrenheit 451 and the temperature is roughly the point at which books burn. Use of the error might not become widespread as censorious governments and law enforcement agencies may disallow its use.

 

 

IETF chair Mark Nottingham writes that "as censorship became more visible and prevalent on the Web, we started to hear from sites that they'd like to be able to make this distinction. More importantly, we started to hear from members of the community that they wanted to be able to discover instances of censorship in an automated fashion."

 

It was ultimately this need for machine-readable statistics on censorship that carried the proposal through to full approval as part of the Internet Standards. Although the approval is likely to see the fairly rapid implementation of HTTP 451 Unavailable For Legal Reasons in server software such as Apache, its use online will spread more slowly, as and when server owners patch up to the latest versions.

 

 

Just because the standard exists doesn't necessarily mean that it'll be used. Reasonably well-informed speculation inserted into the current Wikipedia entry for HTTP 451 observes that "some sites may be forced to produce HTTP 404 (File Not Found) or similar, if they are not legally permitted to disclose that the resource has been removed", citing that some UK ISPs' implementation of the Internet Watch Foundation blacklist as example of instances where an HTTP 404 error is returned by design. BT's Cleanfeed is referenced as a key example.

 

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Personally I am a great fan of transparency and as such welcome the error, at the same time I am disappointed that there now actually is a need for such an error and fear that in less open countries, and even our own countries companies being forced to hide actions taken on behalf of the government via warrant canaries, it won't be very effective.

 

Original Article: http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2015-12/21/error-451-internet-censorship-alert

[You_are_a_cunt]

Almost better than HTCPC 418. Too bad we need to have this and we can't use 418 more often

[CommandMan7]

When the government is reasonably compared to the whole situation in fahrenheit 451, you know it's going downhill.

[Dabombinable]

1. Having some transparency is good

2. Fuck censorship