ISPA Awards: internet villain and hero revealed

The nominations at the Internet Service Providers' Association (ISPA) annual awards have been handed out - and as usual it's the heroes and villains category that draws our attention. (You can find the full list and winners here.)

For villains, the nominations were:

• The BPI "For its heavy handed approach against consumers rather than engaging in constructive dialogue with the Internet industry when dealing with filesharing."
• BT Wholesale "For changing the whole engineering plan for 21CN only six months before the launch date."
• David Cameron MP "For buddying up with the music industry and trying to appeal to a younger audience." [Should he have aimed for an older audience, then? - CA]
• HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) "For failing to take the protection of peoples' personal data seriously and highlighting bad practice in protecting data by loosing [sic] computer disks containing confidential details of 25 million child benefit recipients."
• Nicolas Sarkozy, the French President "For his proposed new tax on Internet access and mobile phone use to fund France's two public television channels, which would be free of advertising."

And the potential heroes?

• Facebook "For respecting peoples' browsing privacy by retracting the Beacon service, a system which automatically records user's online spending habits, by making it an opt-in not opt-out service."
• The Financial Services Authority (FSA) "For keeping a keen eye on the promotional websites of financial services and warning that they are not fair or clear enough. A quarter of 77 sites reviewed "failed to present information in a fair, clear and not misleading way", the FSA said."
• The Rt. Hon. Stephen Timms MP, Minister of State for Competitiveness "For leading the push to increase Internet access speeds, paving the way for services such as high-definition Internet TV."
• Peter Robbins OBE QPM, Chief Executive, IWF "For his continued leadership of the IWF and approach to fostering extensive partnerships with the Internet industry, the government and law enforcement agencies to tackle illegal online content."
• Derek Wyatt MP "For a decade of support promoting the Internet in the UK Parliament as chairman of the All Party Parliamentary Internet Group since 1997."

And the winner: Peter Robbins OBE QPM, Chief Executive, IWF.

It could be a challenging year next time - who are your heroes and villains? From an ISP's point of view, the BBC's iPlayer might be a villain (for all that streaming it encourages) while a company that, say, offered to boost your revenues by showing targeted ads might feel like a hero. Do the nominations above fit your definitions of heroes and villains, though?

The winner? HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC). Quite a crowded field, though.