This is going to be a short diary, which I apologize for, but there's no sense in dragging out something that doesn't have to be long. I found this e-mail in my inbox today, from an organization called Demand Progress that has been opposing the Internet blacklist bill in all its various forms and advocating for Net Neutrality for several years:
Crazy and awesome story.
Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) is the lead sponsor of the bill that would make it a felony to post certain streamed content online -- meaning ordinary Americans would risk getting locked up for posting karaoke videos, cover band performances, video game play-throughs, and more to YouTube. It's now been rolled into the House's version of the Internet Blacklist Bill.
Now, I know that single issue voters are frowned on here. In truth, it doesn't really affect anything more than my perception of Senator Klobuchar, since I do not live in Minnesota, and am too strapped for cash right now to be giving much in the way of political donations to people outside my own state. But what I would like to know from the people who have followed this issue more closely than I, and from those who know more of Senator Klobuchar than I do, is what on earth would possess her to take leave of her senses and propose such a boneheaded, stupid law as she has been proposing?
It really seems out of character for someone who (so I thought) was so well acquainted with the blogging and online community, and who used to be a prosecutor. Everything I have heard about the bill she submitted is that it is atrociously written law. Why would she write something like this? This is the kind of stuff I expect from Joe Lieberman, Ben Nelson, or Kent Conrad. But Amy Klobuchar? I thought she was supposed to be on our side. And while I understand that even the best of the people who are on "our side" will part from us now and again, it seems to me that this issue is so obvious that anyone with a lick of sense who is on our side would never have supported the original bill, much less introduced it.