Re: Reviving discussion on error code 451

>> 
>> 
>> The reason they’re not likely to use 451 is for the same reason you hardly ever see the 404 status code. They don’t want to emit some status code that will give you a blank page. They want to show you a scary page with official logos telling you to get away from the evil content and reminding you of what happens to people who get caught with content like that.
> 
> Sorry, what?
> 
> 404s are sent all the time; browser display the body just as they would for a 200. Likewise for 451 (and this has been tested).

I know, but I see a lot of status code 200 with content that says the resource is not available. Could be an issue with some server platform. I don’t know enough about why that is done.

> As I said, I've talked to some content folks who are interested in producing this status code. Hopefully, they'll put their .02 in when we do a call for adoption.

I’m not a content person, but I do work for a provider of filtering software. Filtering can be either because of detected malware or because of policy. At least for the case of filtering based on policy, a specialized status code is very useful. Filtered content should be reflected to the browser, so that the users can distinguish filtering from network glitches, so that they can protest mis-categorized content.

Whether the status code in the draft will be useful for us depends, in part, on the meaning as defined in the document. If it’s phrased so that it only applies to government-mandated censorship as opposed to other kinds of filtering (think net-nanny), then it won’t be useful for us. Otherwise, it might be useful.

Either way, I am in favor of adoption, but the semantics matter to applicability.

Yoav

Received on Wednesday, 17 December 2014 06:54:31 UTC