Subject: Fwd: New Version Notification for draft-tbray-http-legally-restricted-status-01.txt

From: Tim Bray <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2012 16:25:33 -0700

Since MNot has put this on the agenda, I thought I should revise one more
time.  There’s one big change and a bunch of little ones.

Big: I went and talked to some subject-matter experts at Google who are
paid to think about this sort of policy stuff, and some others who might
have to implement it.  I got strong advice that the draft should not talk
about “legal restrictions” because this might carry an implication that the
party emitting the 451 acknowledges that this is in fact a “restriction”.
 In fact, many parties get legal demands that they think might well be
bogus but choose not to go to court for reasons of policy or cost; so
they’d like to avoid implying that they acknowledge a “restriction”.  I was
advised that it was perfectly OK to report that legal “demands” had been
made, and eventually became convinced that this was more accurate. The
Republican Guards call up and demand that you take down some links, and you
think they might be full of crap, but they’re the Guards, so you can
accurately report that the *demand* was made.

So most of the changes are a slight re-spin to talk about demands or
obstacles rather than restrictions.

Smaller:
- Typos fixed
- Changed to People’s Front of Judea for better Pythonicity
- Changed reference to Roman law in response to expert advice.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From:  <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, Jul 10, 2012 at 4:16 PM
Subject: New Version Notification for
draft-tbray-http-legally-restricted-status-01.txt
To: [email-masked]

A new version of I-D, draft-tbray-http-legally-restricted-status-01.txt
has been successfully submitted by Tim Bray and posted to the
IETF repository.

Filename:        draft-tbray-http-legally-restricted-status
Revision:        01
Title:           A New HTTP Status Code to Report Legal Obstacles
Creation date:   2012-07-10
WG ID:           Individual Submission
Number of pages: 5
URL:
http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-tbray-http-legally-restricted-status-01.txt
Status:
http://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-tbray-http-legally-restricted-status
Htmlized:
http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-tbray-http-legally-restricted-status-01
Diff:
http://tools.ietf.org/rfcdiff?url2=draft-tbray-http-legally-restricted-status-01

Abstract:
   This document specifies an additional Hypertext Transfer Protocol
   (HTTP) status code for use when resource access is denied due to
   legal demands.

The IETF Secretariat

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From: James M Snell <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2012 21:21:27 -0700

+1 definitely better overall.

On Tue, Jul 10, 2012 at 4:25 PM, Tim Bray <[email-masked]> wrote:
> Big: I went and talked to some subject-matter experts at Google who are paid
> to think about this sort of policy stuff, and some others who might have to
> implement it.  I got strong advice that the draft should not talk about
> “legal restrictions” because this might carry an implication that the party
> emitting the 451 acknowledges that this is in fact a “restriction”.  In
> fact, many parties get legal demands that they think might well be bogus but
> choose not to go to court for reasons of policy or cost; so they’d like to
> avoid implying that they acknowledge a “restriction”.  I was advised that it
> was perfectly OK to report that legal “demands” had been made, and
> eventually became convinced that this was more accurate. The Republican
> Guards call up and demand that you take down some links, and you think they
> might be full of crap, but they’re the Guards, so you can accurately report
> that the *demand* was made.
>

---

From: Wendy Seltzer <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2012 12:42:14 -0400

On 07/10/2012 07:25 PM, Tim Bray wrote:
> time.  There?s one big change and a bunch of little ones.
> 
> about ?legal restrictions? because this might carry an implication that the
> party emitting the 451 acknowledges that this is in fact a ?restriction?.
> they?d like to avoid implying that they acknowledge a ?restriction?.  I was
> advised that it was perfectly OK to report that legal ?demands? had been
> think they might be full of crap, but they?re the Guards, so you can

What about an additional recommendation that, where permitted, servers
should include a link to more information?

A link could provide information about the specific demand or the
general legal context. With Chilling Effects, I'm thinking, from the
other direction, about better standardizing the description and posting
of these demands, so it could be interesting to encourage pointers.

--Wendy

-- 
Wendy Seltzer -- [email-masked] +1.617.863.0613
http://wendy.seltzer.org/

---

From: Tim Bray <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2012 09:47:21 -0700

Hm, the draft now says “ Responses using this status code SHOULD include an
explanation, in the response body, of the details of the legal demand:
which legal authority is making it, and what class of resources it applies
to.”

These days, I’d expect that by default such an explanation would be in HTML
and include links; that’s how I’d do it, anyhow.  And most organizations
deploying this are probably somewhat in cover-their-asses mode & thus would
be incented to link to the primary references.

But of course, proposals to modify drafts are always in order, and since
this one has only had two passes by one person, it’d be surprising if it
couldn’t be improved. -T

---

From: Phillip Hallam-Baker <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2012 12:47:39 -0400

A HTTP server can always return content with a status code but it will
only display in the browser if it is HTML or the like.

Formalizing some means of providing a link would be useful but
probably something for HTML rather than HTTP?

-- 
Website: http://hallambaker.com/

---

From: Wendy Seltzer <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2012 06:30:12 -0400

> probably something for HTML rather than HTTP?

It's been suggested to me that RFC 5988 link-relation headers might be
useful in this context. http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5988

A standard location and relation (e.g. "legal-demand") for such links
could make it easier for independent reviewers to find and aggregate
takedown information.

--Wendy