Re: Fwd: New Version Notification for draft-tbray-http-legally-restricted-status-01.txt

Hm, the draft now says “ Responses using this status code SHOULD include an
explanation, in the response body, of the details of the legal demand:
which legal authority is making it, and what class of resources it applies
to.”

These days, I’d expect that by default such an explanation would be in HTML
and include links; that’s how I’d do it, anyhow.  And most organizations
deploying this are probably somewhat in cover-their-asses mode & thus would
be incented to link to the primary references.

But of course, proposals to modify drafts are always in order, and since
this one has only had two passes by one person, it’d be surprising if it
couldn’t be improved. -T

On Thu, Jul 12, 2012 at 9:42 AM, Wendy Seltzer <wseltzer@w3.org> wrote:

> On 07/10/2012 07:25 PM, Tim Bray wrote:
> > Since MNot has put this on the agenda, I thought I should revise one more
> > time.  There?s one big change and a bunch of little ones.
> >
> > Big: I went and talked to some subject-matter experts at Google who are
> > paid to think about this sort of policy stuff, and some others who might
> > have to implement it.  I got strong advice that the draft should not talk
> > about ?legal restrictions? because this might carry an implication that
> the
> > party emitting the 451 acknowledges that this is in fact a ?restriction?.
> >  In fact, many parties get legal demands that they think might well be
> > bogus but choose not to go to court for reasons of policy or cost; so
> > they?d like to avoid implying that they acknowledge a ?restriction?.  I
> was
> > advised that it was perfectly OK to report that legal ?demands? had been
> > made, and eventually became convinced that this was more accurate. The
> > Republican Guards call up and demand that you take down some links, and
> you
> > think they might be full of crap, but they?re the Guards, so you can
> > accurately report that the *demand* was made.
>
> What about an additional recommendation that, where permitted, servers
> should include a link to more information?
>
> A link could provide information about the specific demand or the
> general legal context. With Chilling Effects, I'm thinking, from the
> other direction, about better standardizing the description and posting
> of these demands, so it could be interesting to encourage pointers.
>
> --Wendy
>
>
> --
> Wendy Seltzer -- wseltzer@w3.org +1.617.863.0613
> http://wendy.seltzer.org/
>
>
>
>