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Jubilee Blues and WiFi issues: Digital Voices 09/06/12

Welcome to the latest instalment of #DigitalVoices, the cream of the comments from Recombu Digital’s stories.

This week we’ve had some great reactions to news of Prince William, heir to the British throne, doubling as a malware magnet, O2 and Be Broadband shuttering access to The Pirate Bay and come classic CAPS LOCK RAGE elsewhere.

Here’s the best of this week’s below the line action.

Jubilee Blues and WiFi issues: Digital Voices 09/06/12


Jubilee phishing makes Prince William ‘most dangerous royal’ online

Prince William is a hot search term at the best of times. Factor in his gran’s Diamond Jubilee and the Wills factor intensifies by infinity. It’s unsurprising then to learn that sites hosting ‘Prince William’ images and news are popular targets for malware peddlers.

In any story involving a member of the British Royal Family you can expect to hear some anti-monarchical sentiments at some point. It’s like Godwin’s Law for wannabe Wat Tylers.

Equally, one can also expect a gallant commentard to leap to the defence of the realm and shout down any republican naysayers.

But Carly’s comment, which jokingly referred to Fledgling: Jason Steed (apparently Wills’ favourite book), provoked the wrath of Mousey Vann:

“IF YOU CANT SAY ANYTHING GOOD ABOUT THE PRINCE, PLEASE DONT SAY ANYTHING AT ALL.GOD BLESS THE MONARCHY.”

Sky blocks The Pirate Bay in the UK

From insulting Prince William (however mildly) to insulting the Prime Minister; David Cameron was compared to a ‘little Hitler’ (what did we say about Godwin’s Law?) ‘neath the line on this story on Sky blocking The Pirate Bay.

Though a story from last week, O2 and Be Broadband have shuttered the torrent tracking site over the last two days.

The rights holders battle with the pirates is going to be a long and interesting one – we’re very curious to see what BT has up it’s sleeve. Simply blocking access to www.thepiratebay.se isn’t going to solve much, as a nameless Guest spake:

“there are literally dozens of workarounds which it is doubtful they’ll be able to completely prevent.”

BT has plans beyond just sticking a ‘no entry’ sign over one URL; we’re curious to see what its comprehensive plans are and how pirates will react. If there’s one thing that BT has some experience in it’s catching theives on its network, one way or another…


BT’s killer RABIT foils copper cable thieves

One story that just won’t stop serving up comment gold is this one about BT’s cable theif tracking system.

Ewan Lamont hopes for a day when there’s fibre everywhere and scrap metal theives won’t bother stealing lines “made of sand and not worth stealing for scrap.”

A good point but as Derekarat mentions:

“Y ES BUT THE THIEVES WILL STILL DAMAGE IT AS THEY LOOK THE SAME.”

Commenter Big Bob, seemingly confuses steel with copper in his fusillade here:

“If THATCHER hadnt sold our steel industry,there would be no problem as we could have STILL produced it here!!!”

Though the steel industry did go the way of the dodo under Thatcher’s reign, it’s nowhere near as useful for transmitting infomation as copper is. Arguably, the Thatcher government is more responsible for the state of Broadband Britain today than any cable thieves could ever hope to be.

That’s the best of the comments for this week; it was a short week after all what with plenty of you enjoying the Jubilee celebrations. Some of you anyway.

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