Going beyond other European countries, the Italian government has drafted a decree that would mandate the vetting of videos for pornographic or violent content uploaded by users onto such sites as YouTube, owned by Google, and the France-based Dailymotion, as well as blogs and online news media sites.

Google, press freedom watchdogs (raise eyebrow and think about google.cn for a second, now shrug and continue reading) and telecom providers are among those pressing for changes in the draft to stop the fast-track legislation from going into effect as early as Feb. 4.

Reporters Without Borders (NYSE: BGP) Media says the measures might force Web sites to obtain licenses to operate in Italy.

Meanwhile…

The new question for those (outside of Italy) who create and share their own Web videos is whether or not they should dump Adobe (Nasdaq: ADBE) Flash and other plug-in players for HTML 5, the newest version of the Web’s markup language.

The picture cleared up a little for HTML 5 supporters late last week as they learned that top video sharing sites Vimeo and YouTube were going to offer their users the option of using the new standard. If users of the two Web sites have compatible browsers — a short list right now including Chrome,

ChromeFrame on Internet Explorer and Safari — they will have the ability to watch videos without plug-ins like Flash or Silverlight, as well as quicker in-video navigation and without buffering.

Vimeo spokesperson Brad Daugherty is cautious:

“Almost every thread on the Internet about HTML 5 devolves into some kind of flamewar. Please don’t comment here extolling the virtues of open source or unencumbered codecs…We know, it’s our job to know and that conversation has been had a million times. The simple fact is right now h.264 [a coding format] allows us the most flexibility to display on many devices and many players with the same file. When that changes, so will we.”

And meanwhile…

YouTube announced this week its new movie rental strategy.

Instead of the commercial first-run features that are popular with Netflix (Nasdaq: NFLX) members, YouTube said this week that it will make available for streaming rental five movies from this year’s and last year’s Sundance Film Festivals. The price per rental is $3.99.

It appears to be just a dip into the pay-per-streaming market for the world’s biggest video Web site, purchased a little over three years ago by Google (Nasdaq: GOOG).

Reads a recent post on the YouTube blog:

“While YouTube has offered an easy and economical way for filmmakers — as well as content creators of all kinds — to instantaneously connect with fans around the world, many of them have told us that the ad-supported business model doesn’t always meet their distribution and monetization needs…These are early days and in the coming weeks we’ll also invite a small group of partners across other industries, in addition to independent film, to participate in this new option.”