It’s Friday. The weekend everyone’s been working for is here. The last thing you want to read about is proposed Net Neutrality legislation making its way through Congress. But there were two developments on that front this week that you should at least be aware of, so to make it easier for you, we created this handy-dandy chart.

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Viacom and Google amped up their war of words over the past couple of days, as each side braces for a big fight in the looming $1 billion copyright infringement lawsuit Viacom brought against Google-owned YouTube.

Sumner Redstone fired off a round during a speech yesterday when he called out YouTube for aiding piracy. Redstone said:

“We cannot tolerate any form of piracy by anyone, including YouTube…they ( YouTube) cannot get away with stealing our products.”

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Sen. Ted “Tubes” Stevens (R-Alaska) warned FCC Chairman Kevin Martin yesterday that the upcoming digital TV transition should be his No. 1 priority, and that Martin should forget distractions like a la carte cable pricing and Net Neutrality.

According to Multichannel News, Sen. Stevens said:

“I won’t get offensive, but there are other issues that are just not time sensitive—a la carte, for instance, and net neutrality,” Stevens said. “In my judgment, they are solutions looking for a problem. We have a major problem and the major problem is the digital transition.”

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Just as we were starting to pick up the oldteevee pieces in the wake of the crippling writers’ strike, the actors guilds have started contract negotiations with Hollywood studios. If they go on strike, what will that mean for web video? Honestly, probably not much.

The writers’ strike was supposed to be a tipping point for online video. With nothing to choose from but repeats and reality shows, audiences were expected to turn to web shows. Fueled with hopes of casting off the shackles of studio oppression and launching their own online production companies, some of the writers even met with VCs. The demise of the boob tube was on the horizon.

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Being able to pick and choose which cable channels you want instead of having them all bundled into one package would bring “economic ruin,” according to recent research from Yankee Group. But as online video grows, the point may already be moot.

“A la carte” pricing for cable has been a hotly-debated topic since… well, since people first looked at their cable bill and cursed their provider. Yankee says the average cable subscriber pays $60 a month for basic cable, and Nielsen Media Research said that the average cable subscriber pays for 85 channels and only watches 16.

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Verizon FIOS Playing Dirty Tricks with its Terms; customers not getting to see all of the stipulations of the contract until after they get the service — like the $199 early termination charge. (LA Times)

VoloMedia Raises $3.5 Million; audio and video advertising and metrics firm announces additional funding from Leader Ventures. (release)

Bummed HD DVD Owners Can Get Some Monetary Satisfaction; Circuit City taking back defunct players for store credit, Best Buy offering $50 gift cards and buybacks. (Bits Blog)

Make Your Own March Madness Mashup; college hoops fans can mix video highlights from games at CBSSports.com. (paidContent)

Sci-Fi Channel Creates New Web Shows; network’s online offerings will include streamed episodes of Battlestar Galactica (before they air on TV) as well as webisodes for the show, and Starcrossed, a sci-fi spoof series. (Broadcasting & Cable)

New Indiana Jones Trailer Get Widgetized; studio promoting contest to see who can spread the trailer the widest. (The Hollywood Reporter)

Endemol UK Takes Stake in Pure Grass Films; Endemol buys 40 percent of the digital production company behind the upcoming online horror series Beyond the Rave. (Variety)

Adobe, with today’s launch of its Flash Media Rights Management Server, is enabling big media companies to put tighter restrictions on their content. The software works with applications built on Adobe AIR, such as the upcoming Adobe Media Player, to extend control of Flash content — even after it’s been downloaded. Content owners can set customized restrictions including how long the content can be viewed, whether an ad needs to be watched first, and who can view it.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation isn’t going to like this. It was already up in arms over the existing Flash DRM. From a February EFF blog post:

Instead of an ordinary web download, these programs can use a proprietary, secret Adobe protocol to talk to each other, encrypting the communication and locking out non-Adobe software players and video tools. We imagine that Adobe has no illusions that this will stop copyright infringement–any more than dozens of other DRM systems have done so–but the introduction of encryption does give Adobe and its customers a powerful new legal weapon against competitors and ordinary users through the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).

In response to mounting pressure from the movie, music and software industries, four major Japanese ISPs have agreed to work together to purge copyright infringing file-sharers from their networks, according to TorrentFreak.

Copyright holders would use “special detection software” to sniff out online pirates and then notify the ISPs. Punishment is reminiscent of high school with ISPs first emailing a warning, then interrupting service if that doesn’t work, and finally, chronic violators would get expelled from the service. The ISPs are convening in April to figure out exactly how the new policy would operate.

The crusade against file sharers isn’t just limited to Japan; similar proposals have been floated in France, the UK and Australia.

A federal judge denied Viacom’s claim for punitive damages in its $1 billion copyright lawsuit against Google/YouTube. Viacom can still sue for damages, with statutory penalties for copyright violation ranging from $750 to $30,000 per violation (or up to a whopping $150,000 if the infringement was committed willfully).

Funnily enough, Judge Louis Stanton’s ruling today came almost one year to the day after Viacom filed the suit heard ’round the online world (if you’ve forgotten the finer points of this case, check out our handy CliffsNotes version). You’ll have plenty of time to get caught up this year as the case is just getting warmed up.

The full text of today’s ruling after the jump. Read more of this story