Re: Reviving discussion on error code 451

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?

Eliot