Internet DRAFT - draft-tbray-http-legally-restricted-status
draft-tbray-http-legally-restricted-status
Network Working Group T. Bray
Internet-Draft Textuality
Updates: 2616 (if approved) December 16, 2014
Intended status: Standards Track
Expires: June 19, 2015
An HTTP Status Code to Report Legal Obstacles
draft-tbray-http-legally-restricted-status-05
Abstract
This document specifies a Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) status
code for use when resource access is denied as a consequence of legal
demands.
Status of This Memo
This Internet-Draft is submitted in full conformance with the
provisions of BCP 78 and BCP 79.
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This Internet-Draft will expire on June 19, 2015.
Copyright Notice
Copyright (c) 2014 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the
document authors. All rights reserved.
This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal
Provisions Relating to IETF Documents
(http://trustee.ietf.org/license-info) in effect on the date of
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the Trust Legal Provisions and are provided without warranty as
described in the Simplified BSD License.
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Table of Contents
1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
2. Requirements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
3. 451 Unavailable For Legal Reasons . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
4. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
5. IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
6. Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
Appendix A. Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
Author's Address . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
1. Introduction
This document specifies a Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) status
code for use when a server operator has a received a legal demand to
deny access to a resource.
This status code may be used to provide transparency in circumstances
where issues of law or public policy affect server operations. This
transparency may be beneficial both to these operators and to end
users.
[RFC4924] discusses the forces working against transparent operation
of the Internet; these clearly include legal interventions to
restrict access to content. As that document notes, and as Section 4
of [RFC4084] states, such restrictions should be made explicit.
Feedback should occur on the ietf-http-wg@w3.org mailing list,
although this draft is NOT a work item of the IETF HTTPbis Working
Group.
2. Requirements
The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT",
"SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this
document are to be interpreted as described in [RFC2119].
3. 451 Unavailable For Legal Reasons
This status code indicates that the server is denying access to the
resource as a consequence of a legal demand.
The server in question may not be an origin server. This type of
legal demand typically most directly affects the operations of ISPs
and search engines.
Responses using this status code SHOULD include an explanation, in
the response body, of the details of the legal demand: the party
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making it, the applicable legislation or regulation, and what classes
of person and resource it applies to. For example:
HTTP/1.1 451 Unavailable For Legal Reasons
Content-Type: text/html
<html>
<head><title>Unavailable For Legal Reasons</title></head>
<body>
<h1>Unavailable For Legal Reasons</h1>
<p>This request may not be serviced in the Roman Province
of Judea due to the Lex Julia Majestatis, which disallows
access to resources hosted on servers deemed to be
operated by the People's Front of Judea.</p>
</body>
</html>
The use of the 451 status code implies neither the existence nor non-
existence of the resource named in the request. That is to say, it
is possible that if the legal demands were removed, a request for the
resource still might not succeed.
Note that in many cases clients can still access the denied resource
by using technical countermeasures such as a VPN or the Tor network.
4. Security Considerations
4.1. 451 Unavailable for Legal Reasons
The 451 status code is optional; clients cannot rely upon its use.
It is possible that certain legal authorities may wish to avoid
transparency, and not only demand the restriction of access to
certain resources, but also avoid disclosing that the demand was
made.
5. IANA Considerations
The HTTP Status Codes Registry should be updated with the following
entries:
o Code: 451
o Description: Unavailable for Legal Reasons
o Specification: [ this document ]
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6. Normative References
[RFC2119] Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate
Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119, March 1997.
[RFC4084] Klensin, J., "Terminology for Describing Internet
Connectivity", BCP 104, RFC 4084, May 2005.
[RFC4924] Aboba, B. and E. Davies, "Reflections on Internet
Transparency", RFC 4924, July 2007.
Appendix A. Acknowledgements
Thanks to Terence Eden, who observed that the existing status code
403 was not really suitable for this situation, and suggested the
creation of a new status code.
Thanks also to Ray Bradbury.
The author takes all responsibility for errors and omissions.
Author's Address
Tim Bray
Textuality
Email: tbray@textuality.com
URI: http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/
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