Salon warned consumers that entertainment driven by data gathering "won't end well." Author Andrew Leonard described how much Netflix knew about his viewing experience with a particular show: "I hit the pause button roughly one-third of the way through the first episode of 'House of Cards,'...Netflix, by far the largest provider of commercial streaming video programming in the United States, registers hundreds of millions of such events...Netflix doesn’t know merely what we’re watching, but when, where and with what kind of device we’re watching. It keeps a record of every time we pause the action — or rewind, or fast-forward — and how many of us abandon a show entirely after watching for a few minutes...Netflix might not know exactly why I personally hit the pause button...but if enough people pause or rewind or fast-forward at the same place during the same show, the data crunchers can start to make some inferences."

• While 2012 is now behind us, some of its legal developments may catch up to us in 2013. TechDirt warned that a proposed copyright small claims court "may have a bigger impact than the DMCA." Because prosecuting users is generally so expensive for rights holders, they're looking for other ways to target those they consider guilty of infringement. "We see a lot of the bullying and trolling that takes place in the informal copyright system, where overreaching DMCA takedown notices and cease and desist letters are common. As many people reading this may know, bogus copyright claims are regularly misused to takedown otherwise legal content. So we have to balance the need of independent creative people to get 'justice' for their works being wholly misappropriated by bad actors, while keeping life sane for average internet users."