A completely inappropriate use of the 451 HTTP status code. Europe is not censoring anyone. It’s just a website that refuses to protect user privacy.
Every day I see Europeans on here sharing tips how to de-cloud and de-America, bemoaning the open Internet, yearning for Balkanisation. Cool. Well, this site does it for you. You're welcome! Enjoy!
This status code can be used to provide transparency in circumstances
where issues of law or public policy affect server operations. This
transparency may be beneficial both to these operators and to end
users.
...
This status code indicates that the server is denying access to the
resource as a consequence of a legal demand.
GDPR law does indeed make it illegal to serve certain web pages to EU visitors. If the operators are not willing to make amendments to comply with the law, then responding with HTTP 451 is the most correct thing to do. It doesn't mean the law is inherently bad, but it does mean that serving the request would be illegal, because that is how the law is written.
If this feels "completely inappropriate", then maybe it's because the modern web platform is completely ass-backwards in the first place. One must wonder why we're continuing to tolerate giving effectively static web pages so many privileges on our computers passively. I think browsers should flat-out start removing said privileges from websites that abuse them.
I don't know how to break this to you, but that is the correct status code. They can be forgiven that they didn't make a second status code for "Page Can't Be Loaded Because It's Illegal But Actually It Should Be In Many People's Opinions".
I'm not in favor of pervasive internet tracking, but that doesn't change the reality: it is illegal for them to serve you that page. Putting it that way does make it sound bad, but what do you want to do, invent new words to make it seem better? It's what it is.
Saying "they could just not collect data" is like saying "they could just not show porn" or talk about Winnie the Pooh or whatever.
To be pedantic, they aren't refusing to protect privacy, they're refusing to comply with GDPR which requires more than just protecting privacy.
It could be that they just don't want to put a big dumb banner on their site.
Why? Even logging an IP address in a request log is creating records controlled by GDPR.
When TV news in the US is broke and only gets along because large companies buy up stations to control the news, its hard to justify spending tens of thousands of dollars on complying with laws from another continent.
Untrue. IP is an category of PII but its not PII in itself unless you're a law enforcement.
Separately, if you log IP addresses you're doing it to prevent abuse and to provide security to your server, you're already permitted to do so.
More on that: https://missinfogeek.net/gdpr-consent/
I should have suspected that’d be the case.