justin bieber

A year ago, Rebecca Black’s unforgettable viral tune “Friday” first appeared on YouTube.

Since then, the massively autotuned “Friday” music video has reached millions upon millions of eyes, spawned countless parodies and caught the attention of many celebrities.

During the last decade the RIAA embarked on an online anti-piracy action which would later go down as one of the most controversial ever seen.

After spending years on various educational campaigns, none of which worked, a new plan was put into motion.

It involved monitoring P2P networks for infringements, unmasking the perpetrators, and then threatening to sue unless a large ‘fine’ or settlement was paid.

1. R.I.P. Jorelys Rivera

On December 6, Jorelys Rivera, a 7 year old girl from Georgia, was found dead in a dumpster next to the River Ridge apartments where she lived.

She had disappeared from the apartments’ playground 4 days earlier.

There's been a bit of a back and forth over whether or not S.978 in the Senate and the felony streaming provisions of SOPA in the House would, in fact, put Justin Bieber at risk of jailtime for uploading videos of himself covering songs without permission of the copyright holder.

There appeared to be enough that was vague in both laws that it could be interpreted that way, and that seems quite troubling for a variety of reasons.

YouTube sensation Rebecca Black has been crowned queen bee of 2011 memes, topping Know Your Meme‘s 2011 list of most-viral content.

Her massively autotuned “Friday” music video, ripe with unforgettable lyrics, seeped into our brains in March.

Just as we were moving on, the song made a comeback on Black Friday.

The People’s Republic of Twitterstan had quite a year indeed, what with record-breaking tweet surges, a growing active userbase and some serious celebrity brouhaha.