Re: Reviving discussion on error code 451

On Thu, Dec 18, 2014 at 06:44:14AM +0100, Eliot Lear wrote:
> Hi Tim,
> 
> On 12/18/14, 4:01 AM, Tim Bray wrote:
> >
> > On Wed, Dec 17, 2014 at 2:24 PM, Eliot Lear <lear@cisco.com
> > <mailto:lear@cisco.com>> wrote:
> >
> >
> >     Is there a recommended action that a client would programmatically
> >     take?  Absent such an action what is the benefit over a 404?   Is
> >     the intent to route around the failure?
> >
> >
> > There are a variety of things a client could do, ranging from styles
> > of visual display to looking for alternate paths to the desired
> > resource. Also it depends what kind of client you???re talking about;
> > I???m more interested in the applications for robot/crawler style clients.
> >
> > But I think that???s perhaps the wrong question to be asking.  We have
> > heard it asserted by several parties that they would like to have a
> > standardized way to report the status when legal demands force them to
> > deny access to a resource.  I???m not sure it???s appropriate for us to
> > tell them that they shouldn???t want this.  And I think that unless it
> > damages the Internet, in general we should strive to give service
> > providers what they want.
> 
> Disagree.  Nobody should just get something because they want
> something.  And to determine whether it damages the Internet one needs
> to have at least some view as to what the semantic intent is.  And so my
> point is that your draft is a bit too cryptic about how the status code
> will be used.  How will this help the Internet?  What is the benefit
> over 410, which doesn't have all the legal hooha?

That's exactly why I was saying that the difference between "I'm not allowed
to deliver this" and "you're not allowed to get this" is very important. In
the first case, it means "find someone else" while in the second case it
means "no one should deliver you this anyway or ask your local legal contacts
to be allowed".

Willy

Received on Thursday, 18 December 2014 06:26:46 UTC