The Wayback Machine - https://web.archive.org/web/20150331172339/http://www.imdb.com/boards/

Access denied
http: 403

Sorry, this imdb.com (Internet Movie Database) page is not accessible from your address or browser. This page contains information which may explain why you are seeing this error instead of the page you wanted. Please read this information and if after reading it you still do not understand why you have been denied access then you should use the contact details at the end to request information specific to your case.

Note: the majority of people seeing this page are innocent users suffering because of offenders who use the same Internet address or software as they do. Chances are, you're not the offender and we'll do our best to restore your access once we're aware of your circumstances.

The three main reasons for seeing this message are:

  1. your browser or proxy server isn't identifying itself and is blocked because we don't trust it to behave.

    If your browser/proxy/agent does not send a HTTP User-Agent header, this server will reject the request. Most anonymous software turns out to be automated junk that hits us too fast and too hard. This deprives our online users of a quick and speedy service. Such denials of service (intentional or not) will result in loss of access to our site. You may be able to gain access by reading the information here

  2. you've typed or followed some broken URL.

    Returning to the home page should get you started.

  3. your Internet address or web browser or proxy server has been banned for misuse of our service, e.g. overloading our servers with automated requests that are just too fast

    If you want your own local copy of the database then you only needed to have looked for it. http://imdb.com/interfaces will explain how you can have your own copy of the IMDb and as it runs on your system you can hit it as hard and as frequently as you like. Please note the copyright on the data.

    All requests from NetSonic, NetJet, NetCarta, Autonomy, WebWhacker, FlashSite, Java102, Teleport-Pro, MemoWeb, Microsoft's MS-Catapult/0.9, Netscape's Catalog-Robot, Microsoft's "Site Analyst" are rejected because of persistent attempts to download huge numbers of pages as fast as the networks permit.

    So called 'web-accelerators' can be a nuisance and we don't want them here. We can't block these programs but what we can do is send this page instead of whatever the software asked for every time. Please disable your URL prefetching 'web accelerators' to avoid loss of service.

    Personal web crawlers (e.g. the built-in crawler modes from MSIE 4.0 and Netscape 4.0) are not welcome on this site. MSIE 4.0 is more responsible in that it sometimes identifies itself differently when in crawler mode, so we can block crawling with it, Netscape 4.0 doesn't identify itself as being in crawler mode so we can't detect it - instead we have to use more extreme measures to block abusers of our service - IP addresses of these abusers can be blocked completely once they misbehave (note that Netscape and Microsoft's Internet Explorer are not blocked.)

    Filtering IMDb isn't allowed, so WebWasher filters etc aren't allowed. If everyone used a banner ad filter the vast majority of sites would run out of money to provide you with 'free' services... it's either banner ads or subscription fees.

Robot/crawler guidelines:

Please see http://info.webcrawler.com/mak/projects/robots/robots.html for background information and hints on writing well behaved browsers/robots/crawlers.

Reporting problems:

If you cannot work out why you've seen this page, please report problems to 'access-errors@imdb.com', include the items listed below in any email.

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