Re: Reviving discussion on error code 451

Hi Tim,

On 12/17/14, 4:36 AM, Tim Bray 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.

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?

Eliot