Philosophy Wire by Spiros Kakos [2013-03-28]: The internet around the world has been slowed down in what security experts are describing as the biggest cyber-attack of its kind in history. A row between a spam-fighting group and hosting firm has sparked retaliation attacks affecting the wider Internet. It is having an impact on popular services like Netflix - and experts worry it could escalate to affect banking and email systems. Five national cyber-police-forces are investigating the attacks. [source: web news]
Spamhaus, a group based in both London and Geneva, is a non-profit organisation which aims to help email providers filter out spam and other unwanted content. To do this, the group maintains a number of blocklists - a database of servers known to be being used for malicious purposes.
Recently, Spamhaus blocked servers maintained by Cyberbunker, a Dutch web host which states it will host anything with the exception of child pornography or terrorism-related material. Cyberbunker accuses Spamhaus that it actually dictatorically decides what can be and what cannot be seen in the Internet.
Content filtering is a great "footnote" which not many people notice. And the greatest danger of them all is that we BELIEVE we are free to see EVERYTHING, while we are anything but...
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