There is a truly international outlook to this year’s ISP Heroes and Villains nominations. The world wide web recognises no boundaries 🙂  Such is the repute of the annual ISP Awards that I know that not only will the nominees for Hero be basking in quiet contentment but that those up for Villain will likely be sat staring blankly at a wall contemplating their future.

The individual nominations will be known to most and are presented here for your approval. You will have to wait until the Awards night on 7th July to find out the winners.

Hero

• Rory Stewart MP – For his trailblazing efforts to bring broadband to his rural constituency of Penrith and the Borders
• Twitter – For its role in helping people communicate during the Arab spring
• Judge Colin Birss QC – For his considered and damning judgement on the ACS Law that it was “chaotic and lamentable”’
• The Australian Internet Industry Association – For taking the lead and launching a voluntary industry code on infected machines in Australia
• Prof. Ian Hargreaves – For authoring a review that makes recommendations on how IP can be made fitter for the digital age

Villain

• ACS Law/Andrew Crossley – For demanding payments from members of the public on behalf of certain rights holders with poor evidence which brought the “legal profession into disrepute”, and for failing to secure the data of those accused
• New Zealand Government Commerce Minister Simon Power – For being the latest country to put in to law a three strikes rule enabling the disconnection or prosecution of the owner of an IP address alleged to have infringed copyright three times
• Commissioner Barnier – For the lack of transparency and cooperation with industry and other commissioners on the IPR enforcement and IPR strategy as a whole
• Tayfun Acarer, the chairman of the Turkish Information and Communications Technologies Authority – For looking to impose mandatory filtering on all ISP connections in Turkey against “international norms”