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Search Battle Heading to Video
loid_void wrote to mention a Wired story covering the video search battle between the major portals. From the article: "As millions of broadband subscribers who missed a wardrobe-malfunction moment on TV can attest, the internet can be a convenient resource for finding much-talked-about events on video. Large net portals and a handful of smaller sites are looking to change that. In recent weeks, Yahoo, Google and MSN have each rolled out services designed to make it easier to upload or locate video online. The portals' rollouts come as a handful of startups and independent film sites are creating tools to make putting video online nearly as simple as publishing text."
OurMedia.
Keep your eyes to the sky.
According to OurMedia's FAQ they don't support BitTorrent (yet).
Power to the Peaceful
You're right, there have been a few successful efforts to regulate privately-viewed content on the Internet. Most of the big, Federal-level stuff hasn't gone over too well, either as legislation or in the courts when challenged. COPA is the big example I'm thinking of. The Internet just isn't as easy for bluenoses to come down on as TV and other media.
There is that Utah law that requires ISPs to give customers tools that can be used to self-censor, either in the form of parental-control software or router-level blocking of defined offensive sites. This has some problems (like the government maintaining the list of offensive sites!), but it's not really a big concern because it's the customer's choice whether they want to censor or not. This doesn't change the status quo, except to put the burden of paying for the blocking software on the ISP instead of the customer.
There's also that Pennsylvania law that has a list of sites that ISPs must block, but I'm not sure what the current status is... but the scope seems limited, both in terms of the sites blocked (there haven't been any allegations that stuff was blocked based on obscene content or political concerns) and the limited impact (it's only PA, and it's easy to evade). But someone may correct me on those impressions.
*****
One little note: Kiddie porn isn't even an issue, here--bans on child pornography have NOTHING to do with obscenity or decency standards. It's illegal to possess or make child porn, in public or in private, it on or off the Internet. The law places those materials (I think rightly so!) outside the realm of free speech and privacy protections beccause we assume that children were exploited/harmed in making them, and so the making or possession of child porn is a harmful act. It's similar to the "shouting 'fire!' in a crowded theatre" line of thinking (which I also agree with).