451 Unavailable For Legal Reasons

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This error response indicates the server is being censored by the government. This error is usually designated by country.

The error response code was created when governments started restricting access to specific sites for their citizens.

The error code is also reference to a Ray Bradbury story about censorship and burning books.

Due to the nature of this error code the user should be aware that the server in question is restricted and their country may have consequences for attempting to workaround the block.

The HyperText Transfer Protocol (HTTP) 451 Unavailable For Legal Reasons client error response code indicates that the user requested a resource that is not available due to legal reasons, such as a web page for which a legal action has been issued.

Status

451 Unavailable For Legal Reasons

Example

This example response is taken from the IETF RFC (see below) and contains a reference to Monty Python’s Life of Brian

Note: the Link header might also contain a rel="blocked-by" relation identifying the entity and implementing blockage, not any other entity mandating it.

Any attempt to identify the entity ultimately responsible for the resource being unavailable belongs in the response body, not in the rel="blocked-by" link. This includes the name of the person or organization that made a legal demand resulting in the content’s removal.

HTTP/1.1 451 Unavailable For Legal Reasons
Link: <https://spqr.example.org/legislatione>; rel="blocked-by"
Content-Type: text/html

Unavailable For Legal Reasons

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.

Specifications

Specification
An HTTP Status Code to Report Legal Obstacles # n-451-unavailable-for-legal-reasons