Is Code to Fight Online Censorship A Good Thing?

We have all landed on a website to see the dreaded “404 Not Found” error message informing us that a website is either unavailable or no longer exists, but the lack of a definitive reason for the absence naturally frustrates our curious nature. Luckily a global Internet regulatory body has come to the rescue with a new 451 HTTP status code that gives users a friendly heads-up when a web page isn't available because of censorship or any other legal reasons. According to the website 451unavailable.org describing the error code

“Error 451 is a new error code that we want ISPs to show when people visit websites blocked for legal reasons. Courts can require ISPs to block access to certain websites. Showing the Error 451 message makes it clear when a website has been blocked after a court order. In the UK, the websites that have been blocked so far have linked to content that infringes copyright. In some countries, websites that contain material criticizing the government are blocked. Access to the online work of journalists and opposition groups can be restricted. Error 451 pages would include all the key information about the blocking order including links to the relevant court order, how to challenge the block and the law allowing the court to block websites in that country. A proposal for this 451 status code for use when resource access is denied due to legal demands has been made to the Internet Engineering Task Force. 451 Unavailable aims to be a repository for the legal documents that should be included on Error 451 pages and to provide legal analysis of those documents.”

Many of you will remember Fahrenheit 451, the internationally acclaimed novel by Ray Bradbury, a masterwork of twentieth-century literature set in a bleak, dystopian future where American society lives in a world where books are outlawed and firemen burn any books that they find. The novel hammers home the dangers of censorship to prevent the sharing of information and knowledge. This book-burning tale from 1953 is feeling increasingly relevant here in the 21st century where governmental censorship is preventing users from accessing certain websites.

Maybe we shouldn't be too surprised that a new online error code has arrived on the digital scene to make users aware if a website is unavailable due to legal or censorship reasons rather than technical ones. This new Error 451 is clearly inspired by Ray Bradbury’s novel to raise awareness of what information is being censored by a government online. 451unavailable.org describes why the new error code is even needed:

“Error 451 makes it clear when a website has been blocked for legal reasons. When people visit a page that's blocked for legal reasons, it can be hard to work out why that page isn't accessible. Sometimes a 403 Forbidden message appears when a court has ordered a website to be blocked. 403 Forbidden is supposed to appear when a website wants to refuse access to somebody. 403 Forbidden shouldn't be shown when a site is blocked for legal reasons. That's not what it's meant for. People should know that 403 Forbidden only means that the site wants to deny them access. Error 451 would let people know that a court ordered the site to be blocked. This might be because it contains restricted political content or carries copyright material. It's still difficult to work out precisely why a website is blocked and to check if it's been blocked by mistake. A really good Error 451 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.”

There is no singular censorship law, and governments will dictate how much information their citizens can see within their borders. The banning of political content, for example, will not disappear with the launch of an error page that they may or may not use. All eyes will be on just how many developers embrace the worldwide implementation of this 451 error HTTP status code.

Will household names like Google, Facebook and Twitter lead the way by proudly wearing it as a badge of transparency against global censorship? If governments with strict regimes begin removing content from the tech behemoths they could stir a hornet’s nest by informing their citizens how their flow of information is being censored much like the vision illustrated in Bradbury’s book back in 1953.

Many forget that censorship is delivered in many forms. Another inspiration behind this latest position was the Internet Service Providers (“ISP”) in the UK being infamously ordered to censor sites such as the Pirate Bay.

An official online operating standard approved by the Internet Engineering Steering Group (IESG) can only be a giant step forward in bringing complete transparency as it pertains to deciding what we can and cannot read. Sure, critics will point out that there will be a few countries that will simply forbid the use of the code rendering it useless. However, I cannot help but think that this is only the beginning of the 451 error code and its fight against censorship.

Even in the so-called free world, we are often led to believe that videos, social media or blog posts are unavailable purely for technical reasons which is of growing concern and perhaps one of the many reasons why there is often distrust in the air and why the introduction of a new code makes all the more sense.

Anything that empowers the general public to understand how the governments deal with sensitive issues such as censorship can only be a good thing. The fact that it’s all packaged to us with a salute to Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 has certainly captured our attention.

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