SOPA protests may have made it difficult to access many Internet sites last week, but a handful of Internet companies still found access to capital. 

Venture capitalists poured a decade-high $6.9 billion of cash into Internet startups in 2011, according to a study from PricewaterhouseCoopers and the National Venture Capital Association. That trend looks likely to continue in 2012 as Web-based startups attract more financing. 

In the largest venture capital round announced last week, online video game company Trion Worlds Inc. scored $85 million in new funding. Enthusiasm for gamemakers continues on the heels of Zynga Inc.'s recent $1 billion initial public offering. The Redwood City, Calif.-based company's strategic growth equity financing round was led by Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan with returning participation from Bertelsmann Digital Media Investments. Trion's game plan is to use the capital to develop new games beyond their first title, "Rift," an online role-playing game.

According to a Trion spokesperson, players "activated more than 1 million 'Rift' accounts in less than four months, and its North American and European revenues surpassed $100 million in 2011." Trion will also be looking to publish "third-party products" or more ambitiously grow through M&A by "acquiring a great team or studio." Founded as Trion World Network in 2006, Trion has gathered $185 million to date from Time Warner Investments, Comcast Ventures, Rustic Canyon Partners, Trinity Ventures and Doll Capital Management. (Rustic Canyon Group is an investor in The Deal LLC.)

Venture firms continued to shower capital on Internet companies as cloud data security startup Code 42 Software Inc. closed a $52.5 million first round from Accel Partners and Split Rock Partners. The investment by Accel Partners is the first major investment from its recently formed $100 million "Big Data" fund, which is dedicated to funding an assortment of data companies. The Minneapolis-based startup's lead product is the CrashPlan system, an automatic backup cloud-based system. Founded in 2001, Code 42 is profitable and plans to use the initial funding to ramp up its sales and marketing presence in an already crowded sector for backing up data. Others in the sector include Carbonite Inc., Dropbox Inc., Decho Corp.'s Mozy and Pro Softnet Corp.'s iDrive.  

Beyond Internet startups, cleantech companies continue to attract venture dollars. Joule Unlimited, which develops technology for creating renewable fuel from carbon dioxide waste and sunlight, secured a $70 million third round of financing. Joule has raised north of $110 million to date. Flagship Ventures led the round for the Bedford, Mass.-based company joined by "undisclosed institutional and private sources." Founded in 2007 by Flagship VentureLabs, Joule plans to put the capital toward completion of its Hobbs, N.M., facility, slated for commissioning this summer. The facility will be designed to test and optimize Joule's helioculture process on a larger scale. Noubar Afeyan, chairman of  Joule Unlimited as well as CEO of Flagship Ventures, said in a statement, "Joule has now successfully moved beyond the research phase to prove the industrial viability of its approach."

Overall, cleantech garnered $4.3 billion from 323 deals in 2011 -- a yearly increase of 12% and the highest level ever recorded.

Add that one to the record books (or the Wikipedia pages).