A recently launched campaign by the Open Rights Group requesting that a new HTTP 400 range status code be created is starting to gain some significant traction. The 400 range codes are commonly used to give users information about why a particular page can’t be displayed, and include problems like 400: Bad Request, 403 Forbidden and one of the most common, the 404 Not Found. If the Open Rights Group gets their way, there will soon be a code which will say, “ERROR 451 – Unavailable for Legal Reasons.” Or “ERROR 451 – Website is Unavailable by Court Order.”
Perhaps this shouldn’t come as a surprise with the fact that more and more sites are being shut down for legal reasons related to privacy, illegal content and other reasons. The example provided is regarding the popular torrent site “The Pirate Bay,” which if visited through the BT in the UK has an extremely vague error message displaying, “Error – Site Blocked.” The Open Rights Group believes that visitors are entitled to more information than that.
Adding the error 451, Open Rights Group argues, would not only let the visitors know why the site is down, but also allow them to take steps to learn more about why the site was blocked. If they believe the court order is unjust, they can send letters to their representatives in government to investigate the issue. As it stands now, it is difficult to figure out why the site is down. Open Rights Group said in a statement that a good error message, “would tell their customers how to challenge a block, how long the block’s expected to last, where the relevant legal documents are and which legal authority imposed the blocking order.”
In addition to letting visitors know why the site is down, this error would also help the visitors because they would know that the site isn’t going to be coming back any time soon. Rather than returning to the page throughout the day, believing that it is a temporary problem, they can move on to other pages.
The proposal was originally submitted to the IETF by a Google engineer in January, and the cause was taken up shortly after by the Open Rights Group. You can see the original proposal to the IETF HERE, and read more about this proposed error code on the site started by Open Rights Group at http://451unavailable.org.
What do you think about this new error message? I think it would help to improve the transparency of governments and courts. Please, share your thoughts below.
