The Internet Service Providers Association (ISPA) has announced the list of finalists for the title of Internet Hero and Internet Villain at the 2012 ISPA Awards.

There doesn’t seem to be an overriding theme to the finalist list this year, although three out of the four heroes are praised for opposing various varieties of mandatory Internet filtering, while three of the villains stand accused of copyright related misdeeds.

Internet Hero Finalists

• Broadband for the Rural North (B4RN) for bringing high speed internet into remote rural communities, setting an example for others to follow
• Ofcom – for its independent assessment of the website blocking measures in the DEA, which they found to be neither “practical” nor “desirable” and “trivial” to circumvent
• Reg Bailey – for his government review into childhood sexualisation which found that giving parents and carers an active choice over what content is suitable for children and young people is preferable to default content filtering
• Foreign Secretary Rt Hon William Hague MP – for recognising, at the London Cyber Conference, that the future internet must be without ‘government control or censorship’ where ‘innovation and competition flourish’ and ‘investment and enterprise are rewarded’
• Court of Justice of the European Union – for its verdict on the Scarlet-Sabam case, which found that an injunction requiring a “complicated” and “costly” filter for copyright infringing material would not strike a fair balance between “the right to protect intellectual property and the right to conduct business”

Internet Villain Finalists

• The International Telecommunications Union – for its internet governance land-grab which could lead to a less open and free internet, controlled by governments in a top-down manner
• Karel De Gucht and Directorate-General Trade – for pushing IPR enforcement standards through ACTA and disregarding the concerns from EU citizens and European Parliament in relation to the threats against fundamental rights
• U.S. Representative Lamar S. Smith – for introducing SOPA: an ill-thought out, draconian piece of legislation that would have stifled innovation and free speech online
• Goldeneye International – for following in the dubious footsteps of previous speculative invoicing, by demanding £700 in damages from account holders who had allegedly downloaded copyright infringing material, relying solely on IP matching and claiming that bill payers were liable for any infringement