have to agree with raymond and Mr Happy hosting as a whole had a great year, warez hosting on the other hand yea it was a bad year for some but what do you expect in warez hosting?

also your 2nd point, I am not so sure it was an issue in whmcs many hosts including my legal hosting business are running it no issue. I think it comes down to these hosts do not know how to secure their servers then blame it on whmcs because it was found to have an exploit.
r0ck Reviewed by r0ck on . Worst Year for hosting Industry - Whats your opinion I believe 2011 - a pretty bad year for Hosting Business. Reasons are 1) Thailand Flood caused shortage of HDDs , RAM sticks. Which badly affected many server providers and monthly server rental prices also increased :O 2) WHMCS Exploit caused attack on many hosters Including BS,S-Dome. Mass Wipe Out :facepalm: 3) RS ran away with money and many RDP,VPS dealers lost their clients data and money paid towards server renewals. X-( 4) IANA assigned all remaining blocks to Providers. Rating: 5