This weekend, AllThingsD.com is distributing awards for Best Performance in a ToS Slapdown, Fastest Disappearing Subscriber Base, and Best Conference to Attend in February If It’s Cold Where You Live. If all involved keep their remarks on topic, things should move along quickly.

BoomTown followed this week’s Facebook drama from the first rumblings of dissatisfaction (and jaded irony) with the copyright changes in the social network’s Terms of Service on through to full-on rallying cries by the likes of Perez Hilton for mass desertion. The drama ended–for now–with CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s public apology and rollback of the changes. If you don’t speak Facebook, you’ll be relieved to know that BoomTown has provided a handy translation. Also, Yahoo (YHOO) CEO “Hurricane Carol” Bartz found an appreciative audience in BoomTown for her Friday Memos, which discuss topics as closely related as the company’s maybe-impending reorg and Saturday night chick flicks.

MediaMemo noted this week that on the Web, the New York Times really is the paper of record, as it beats the online reach of its print counterparts almost as handily as Gawker Media beats the reach of the Los Angeles Times. And Comcast (CMCSA) is feeling the subscriber pinch–it lost more on the basic end and added fewer on the high-end than analysts expected, which is especially bad news during hard times, when people traditionally cling to their cable as they might cling to a security blanket. Elsewhere in the content wars, Hulu was at the center of some interesting questions: Was the content provider forced off of Boxee by the big cable companies? Why did it disappear from CBS’s (CBS) TV.com? And maybe most interestingly, how can the cable guys build their own Hulus?

Digital Daily reported that Sprint’s (S) subscriber base is shrinking too, though CEO Dan Hesse is optimistic about the future, which includes the debut of Palm’s (PALM) new Pre handset. The company is “bullish” about its potential. Google’s (GOOG) adventures in Italy took an interesting turn this week, wrote Digital Daily. The family pressing charges against four of its executives–in reaction to a video in which classmates taunt their son, who has Down Syndrome–decided to drop them. The court, however, is allowing the case to proceed without the family’s involvement. And U2 learned the hard way this week that all it takes is one leaked digital copy of an album–in this case, their latest effort, “No Line on the Horizon”–to facilitate the distribution of millions of unauthorized copies.

In Personal Tech, Walt Mossberg test-drove Unigo, a new site aimed at providing first-hand info on colleges to students (and parents) during what can be a truly stressful time. In Mossberg’s Mailbox, Walt offered advice on working with Microsoft Publisher documents on a Mac, improving searches with Surf Canyon (even the beta version) and using a smartphone as a modem. In the Mossberg Solution, Katie Boehret took a look at Trulia.com, which aims to offer an insider’s view of real estate, and in a special MossBlog, Walt and Katie reported from the World Mobile Congress in Barcelona–not a bad place to go in February, especially from Washington, D.C.

More next week.

It’s not the fault of the ISPs, never mind that they are, according to McGuinness, “destroying the recorded music industry” by failing to tackle piracy. Nor is it the fault of Apple (AAPL) and the makers of other digital media players who are wrongly profiting from their “burglary kits.” Nor can it be blamed solely on Silicon Valley and its “entrepreneurial, hippie values,” which in McGuinness’s opinion have bred a deep disregard for the true value of music.

No, it appears there’s no one to blame for this particular cock-up but Universal Music, which mistakenly put the album up for sale earlier this week at getmusic.com.au. It was only available there for a brief period, but there was time enough for fans to buy it legally. Not surprisingly, copies of the record began showing up on torrent indexes a short while later.

An embarrassing turn of events for a band that had gone to extraordinary lengths to prevent exactly this situation from happening. Still, as TechDirt’s Mike Masnick notes, there’s a lesson to be learned here. “At some point, folks in the music industry are going to (finally) recognize a rather simple fact: it just takes one digital copy of a song/movie/whatever to get out there, and it’s everywhere. You can’t stop it. No matter how annoying it is. No matter what laws it violates. It will happen.”

Since John Paczkowski is still out of range, Beth Callaghan will post Digital Daily today.

Reuters/Hollywood Reporter reports that Microsoft execs have been talking to talent agencies all over Hollywood with the intention of building an exclusive body of original content for the company’s Zune player. Not just standard sitcom fare, either–Zune’s recent update of firmware for the device provides better social functionality, and Microsoft (MSFT) sees this as a move toward the kind of communal functionality pioneered by the XBox multiplayer experience.

Richard Winn, director of entertainment development for Zune, says, “What we would be looking to do with any form of original content is the added component that Zune could provide that iTunes or any competing service couldn’t.”

Great, but will that make a difference, with the Zune market share hovering at 4 percent (compared to Apple at 71 percent)? Probably not. This is the same programming/marketing team, after all, that came up with the idea of launching a Joy Division version of the Zune. Really–Zune users are already lonely; no need to make them sad.

Well, it’s also the team that does the impossible–defying all rumors of extinction and plugging away on a platform no one uses. Maybe while the Zune team is making the rounds, they’ll find out who represents U2.

At the Music Matters confab in Hong Kong, McGuinness slagged broadband Internet service providers, accusing them of aiding and abetting music piracy while CD sales and royalty payments to musicians plunge. “The recorded music industry is in a crisis, and there is crucial help available but not being provided by companies who should be providing that help–not just because it is morally right, but because it is in their commercial interest,” said McGuinness, adding that Internet service providers have been “turning their heads” away from the music industry’s troubles. “One way or another, ISPs and mobile operators are the business partners of the future for the recorded-music business. But they are going to have to share the money in a way that reflects what music is doing for their business. The music business once had to bear the accusation that it was full of dinosaurs who looked back to an old business model rather than embracing a new one,” McGuinness said. “Today, though, it is the music business that is charting the way to the future. If there are dinosaurs around today, I think they are the Internet free-thinkers of the past who believe that copyright is the great obstacle to progress, that the distributors of content should enjoy profits without responsibilities and that the creators and producers of music should simply subordinate their rights to the rights of everyone else.”

By Internet free-thinkers, McGuinness presumably means those crazy longhairs in Silicon Valley whom he accused of destroying the recorded music industry in another keynote address back in January. “Embedded deep down in the brilliance of those entrepreneurial, hippy values seems to be a disregard for the true value of music,” he said at the time. “I suggest we shift the focus of moral pressure away from the individual P2P file thief and on to the multibillion dollar industries that benefit from these countless tiny crimes: the ISPs [internet service providers] the telcos [telecom companies], the device-makers. … We must shame them into wanting to help us. Their snouts have been at our trough feeding free for too long.”

Out of the car, longhair …