Re: Reviving discussion on error code 451

> On Dec 17, 2014, at 5:36 AM, Tim Bray <tbray@textuality.com> wrote:
> 
> On Tue, Dec 16, 2014 at 4:40 PM, Mark Nottingham <mnot@mnot.net <mailto:mnot@mnot.net>> wrote:
> CC:ing Tim to make sure he sees this.
> 
> ​I’m on your WG, but there haven’t been many recent opportunities to chip in my usual input along the lines of “MOAR ENCRYPTION”.​
> ​​
> ​​However, the use case that seems more interesting is a Web site hosting content for others -- e.g., Google, Twitter, Facebook, Github -- who is forced to censor content. Giving them a ​​status code that communicates "I've been legally required not to send this content" would allow this content to be found automatically, thereby making censorship more apparent and ​​accountable.
> 
> ​Yep, and the other one that really turns my crank is statistics-gathering bots.  If this becomes a bit more widely used, aggregating information about the contexts where it’s more (or less) used would be very interesting.​  At the moment I suspect nobody has decent-quality stats about the incidence of legal blockages - I mean civilized-process-of-law legal blockages, not the censors working for oppressive governments, who won’t be using 451 anyhow.
> ​​

Why wouldn’t they?  You’re talking as if their shady organizations blocking content in a society that otherwise abhors censorship. They’re not. They’re out in the open, and this status is one way to tell their citizenry that they’re getting too close to forbidden content. 

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.

Yoav