Re: Status code for censorship?

Thinking it over, the message is supposed to be sent to humans, not machines. So the correct thing would be to redirect to a service-provider hosted page, that says what was blocked and why.

"Access to thepiratebay.se<http://thepiratebay.se> is blocked at the request of xxxxx, according to section yyyyyyy of zzzzzzz.  Sorry for the inconvenience"


On Jun 10, 2012, at 9:51 PM, James M Snell wrote:


Quite honestly, while 403 would probably work just fine, I think a dedicated status code in the 5xx range would make for a better approach, if only from an informational point of view.

HTTP/1.1 512 Service Blocked

Sends a very clear message and makes the fact that the service is being censored, as opposed to merely being technically unavailable, quite clear.

On Jun 9, 2012 10:09 PM, "Tim Bray" <tbray@textuality.com<mailto:tbray@textuality.com>> wrote:
Check out http://yro.slashdot.org/story/12/06/09/1927246/an-http-status-code-for-censorship

The thinking about returning 403 when you’re forbidden to follow a link seems sound to me.  This idea is superficially appealing; is it deeply broken in some way that’s not obvious?  -Tim