As legal take-down requests increase – the Internet Engineering Task Force has launched a brand new HTTP status code specifically designed to showcase that a page is unavailable for legal reasons. The new error code, named 451, is a tribute to Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451. The official draft states:
This status code indicates that the server is denying access to the resource as a consequence of a legal demand.
Error 451 pages are designed to be rather detailed, showcasing all the key information regarding the blocking order – including links to the court order and a reference to the law that allowed the blocking to take place.