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Summary: Everyone knows a 404 Web status messages means you can reach the Web server, but it cant find the page youre looking for. In these days of Internet censorship, a new HTTP Web status message, 451, has been proposed for pages and sites blocked by censorship.

TIm Bray thinks you should know when censorship is blocking you from a Web site.

Back in the early days of the Web, we set up Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) status messages to let people know what was going on with a Web server. Today, we still use 401 error messages for pages youre not authorized to see, 403 pages for pages you cant see even with authentication, and the ever popular 404 for Web pages that cant be found. Now, with the rise of Internet censorship, Tim Bray is proposing a new HTTP code: 451, for Web servers and pages that are being censored,

Bray, a leading Google Android developer and co-creator of one of the first Web search engines, Open Text and XML, has proposed to the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) that code 451 be used for, when resource access is denied for legal reasons. This allows server operators to operate with greater transparency in circumstances where issues of law or public policy affect their operation. This transparency may be beneficial both to these operators and to end users.

Formally, this would be:

451 Unavailable For Legal Reasons

This status code indicates that the server is subject to legal restrictions which prevent it servicing the request.

Since such restrictions typically apply to all operators in a legal jurisdiction, the server in question may or may not be an origin server. The restrictions typically most directly affect the operations of ISPs and search engines.

Responses using this status code SHOULD include an explanation, in the response body, of the details of the legal restriction; which legal authority is imposing it, and what class of resources it applies to.

The name of this code, Bray notes in passing comes from the late Ray Bradburys classic science-fiction novel, Fahrenheit 451. In it, Firemen no longer fight fires, but start them to burn books. The title comes from the ignition point for paper.

Originally posted here:
451: Web censorship status code