A message I hadn't seen before

[redbird]

I just got '451 Unavailable For Legal Reasons
Sorry, this content is not available in your region.' when I tried looking at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer website from London. I am surprised not that things are blocked in different reasons, but that this is one of them, and that it came back as a vanilla HTTP error message.

Comments

[ironed_orchid]

I mostly get those messages on video content rather than regular websites.

Maybe they're afraid of Russian bots?

[green_knight]

I've been getting them more and more from American companies that don't want to comply with the EU 'you must users a chance to opt out of the 1024 tracking cookies you'd like to set' so instead of complying, they just say 'we cannot let you view this'.

[redbird]

Yeah, that's probably it.

[crazysoph]

I think this is probably the most likely reason - I've been having similar issues since the General Data Protection Rules went into effect in Europe. I ended up sometimes using The Wayback Archive as a work-around, if I was desperate to see the content I'd originally clicked on.

Sympathies that it ended up hitting your own enjoyment of the Internet.

Crazy(and wondering if those website writers will change their code with regard to Brexit...)Soph

[frith]

I believe Error 451 indicates that your books have caught fire. I hope you've memorized them? ;^)

[redbird]

Thanks, it actually said 415, but it took me until seeing this comment in my inbox to realize I'd mistyped it.

[frith]

Aw shucks. Oh well, at least your books are safe from salamanders, so there's that!

[chalcedony_starlings]

That's strange. The “Unavailable for Legal Reasons” proposed code is 451, for the above reason; 415 is supposed to be “Unsupported Media Type”.

[redbird]

In which case, I seem to have had it right in the first place. Hang on.... yes, it's 451 (I just retried that URL). *sigh*

[emceeaich]

Tim Bray, who I think proposed that error code, will be amused.