Australian Senator Conroy named Internet Villain of the Year

Stephen Conroy's mandatory internet filtering plans have earned him the title of Internet Villain of the Year at the 11th annual Internet Industry Awards.

The Internet Villain category recognises individuals or organisations that have upset the Internet industry and hampered its development - those whom the industry loves to hate.

As Australia's communications minister, and supporter of one of the world's most ambitious internet censorship plans, Senator Conroy beat out tough competition from the likes of the European Parliament and French President Nicolas Sarkozy.

The nominations for the UK Internet Industry Awards' Internet Villain of the Year 2009 included;

European Parliament - "For supporting an amendment to the Telecom Package on cookies which could yet bring the internet to a standstill"

The proposal would force websites to use a pop-up or other intrusive method to notify visitors to a website every time they received a cookie, even though the technology to control such behaviour is already built into many web browsers.

President Nicolas Sarkozy - "For his continued commitment to the HADOPI law, which advocates a system of graduated response, despite repeated arguments suggesting the law is disproportionate from a number of important groups including the European Parliament"

Sarkozy proposes to ban those who repeatedly download pirated content from all French ISPs for 12 months.

Baroness Vadera - "For excluding a number of ISPs and Rights Holders in agreeing a Memorandum of Understanding that was exclusive and ineffective in progressing relations between the two industries"

UK Business Minister, Barnoness Shriti Vadera, brokered a deal between the music business and six of the UK's biggest ISPs to offer legal broadband subscription services that permit file sharing.

Stephen Conroy and the Australian Government - "For continuing to promote network-level blocking despite significant national and international opposition"

Conroy proposes a secret blacklist blocking "unwanted content", despite evidence that it will hamper internet speeds, be easily circumvented and may spread beyond the initial target of child pornography to be used as a bargaining chip to win the favour of influential conservative politicians - who are already calling for it to be expanded.