New HTTP status code: 451 Unavailable for Legal Reasons
Summary
A new HTTP status code, 451 Unavailable for Legal Reasons, was proposed by Google's Tim Bray in 2012 to specifically indicate when content cannot be served due to legal restrictions, such as government censorship. This code aims to provide clarity, differentiating from 403 Forbidden, which implies a server-side refusal rather than external legal mandates. Responses utilizing 451 should include an explanation in the body detailing the legal authority imposing the restriction and the class of resources it applies to. This allows clients to understand the precise reason for content unavailability. While optional, developers may encounter this status code in the future for legally blocked content.
Google Android Developer Advocate Tim Bray submitted the draft for the new HTTP status code, it will be used on some webpages which can not be served because of legal reasons. Visitors will know that the page cannot be seen because of the government censorship.
According to the draft, responses using this status code should include an explanation, in the response body, of the details of the legal restriction;which legal authority is imposing it, and what class of resources it applies to.
Before this, British ISP used the code 403 Forbidden when they conformed to the court order to block Pirate Bay. Some blogs pointed out that 403 code represents "The server refuses to execute the request", but indeed, the Pirate Bay server didn't receive any requests, so 403 code is not appropriate here.
451 is optional according to Tim Bray. We may see this code in the future when we surfing the Internet for some contents. For the detailed draft, please visit : http://www.tbray.org/tmp/draft-tbray-http-legally-restricted-status.html
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