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Bray 3 Internet-Draft Google 4 Updates: 2616 (if approved) January 06, 2014 5 Intended status: Standards Track 6 Expires: July 10, 2014 8 An HTTP Status Code to Report Legal Obstacles 9 draft-tbray-http-legally-restricted-status-04 11 Abstract 13 This document specifies a Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) status 14 code for use when resource access is denied due to legal demands. 16 Status of This Memo 18 This Internet-Draft is submitted in full conformance with the 19 provisions of BCP 78 and BCP 79. 21 Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering 22 Task Force (IETF). Note that other groups may also distribute 23 working documents as Internet-Drafts. The list of current Internet- 24 Drafts is at http://datatracker.ietf.org/drafts/current/. 26 Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months 27 and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any 28 time. It is inappropriate to use Internet-Drafts as reference 29 material or to cite them other than as "work in progress." 31 This Internet-Draft will expire on July 10, 2014. 33 Copyright Notice 35 Copyright (c) 2014 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the 36 document authors. All rights reserved. 38 This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal 39 Provisions Relating to IETF Documents 40 (http://trustee.ietf.org/license-info) in effect on the date of 41 publication of this document. Please review these documents 42 carefully, as they describe your rights and restrictions with respect 43 to this document. Code Components extracted from this document must 44 include Simplified BSD License text as described in Section 4.e of 45 the Trust Legal Provisions and are provided without warranty as 46 described in the Simplified BSD License. 48 Table of Contents 50 1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 51 2. Requirements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 52 3. 451 Unavailable For Legal Reasons . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 53 4. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 54 5. IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 55 6. Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 56 Appendix A. Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 57 Author's Address . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 59 1. Introduction 61 This document specifies a Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) status 62 code for use when a server operator has a received a legal demand to 63 deny access to a resource. It may be used to provide transparency in 64 circumstances where issues of law or public policy affect their 65 operation. This transparency may be beneficial both to these 66 operators and to end users. 68 Feedback should occur on the ietf-http-wg@w3.org mailing list, 69 although this draft is NOT a work item of the IETF HTTPbis Working 70 Group. 72 2. Requirements 74 The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT", 75 "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this 76 document are to be interpreted as described in [RFC2119]. 78 3. 451 Unavailable For Legal Reasons 80 This status code indicates that the server is denying access to the 81 resource in response to a legal demand. 83 Since such demands typically apply to all operators in a legal 84 jurisdiction, the server in question may not be an origin server. 85 The demands typically most directly affect the operations of ISPs and 86 search engines. 88 Responses using this status code SHOULD include an explanation, in 89 the response body, of the details of the legal demand: the party 90 making it, the applicable legislation or regulation, and what classes 91 of person and resource it applies to. For example: 93 HTTP/1.1 451 Unavailable For Legal Reasons 94 Content-Type: text/html 95 96 Unavailable For Legal Reasons 97 98

Unavailable For Legal Reasons

99

This request may not be serviced in the Roman Province 100 of Judea due to the Lex Julia Majestatis, which disallows 101 access to resources hosted on servers deemed to be 102 operated by the People's Front of Judea.

103 104 106 The use of the 451 status code implies neither the existence nor non- 107 existence of the resource named in the request. That is to say, it 108 is possible that if the legal demands were removed, a request for the 109 resource still might not succeed. 111 4. Security Considerations 113 4.1. 451 Unavailable for Legal Reasons 115 The 451 status code is optional; clients cannot rely upon its use. 116 It is possible that certain legal authorities may wish to avoid 117 transparency, and not only demand the restriction of access to 118 certain resources, but also avoid disclosing that the demand was 119 made. 121 5. IANA Considerations 123 The HTTP Status Codes Registry should be updated with the following 124 entries: 126 o Code: 451 128 o Description: Unavailable for Legal Reasons 130 o Specification: [ this document ] 132 6. Normative References 134 [RFC2119] Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate 135 Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119, March 1997. 137 Appendix A. Acknowledgements 139 Thanks to Terence Eden, who observed that the existing status code 140 403 was not really suitable for this situation, and suggested the 141 creation of a new status code. 143 Thanks also to Ray Bradbury. 145 The author takes all responsibility for errors and omissions. 147 Author's Address 149 Tim Bray 150 Google 152 Email: tbray@textuality.com 153 URI: http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/