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In another under-publicized but overreaching government attempt to curb our Internet freedoms, Senators will be voting on what is known as the “Ten Strikes” bill this week. This bill, sponsored by Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), would make it a felony to stream copyrighted content more than ten times—and could result in jail time for offenders.

Will you contact your lawmakers and tell them to oppose this bill?

This law wouldn’t just apply to sites that stream television show and movies. As TechDirt points out, “people embedding YouTube videos could face five years in jail…it could also put kids who lip sync to popular songs, and post the resulting videos on YouTube, in jail as well.” Make sure your Senators know of your opposition. By emailing them directly, you’ll be standing up to big business lobbyists and making a stand for a free and uncensored Internet.Click here to contact your Senators and tell them to vote agains the Ten Strikes Bill.

Jail You can learn more about Demand Progress and our other campaigns on our website, demandprogress.org.

  • Here is a copy of the email I sent to Demand Progress:

    Hi. You’re welcome to post on Colorado Confluence, and to express any point of view that you favor, but I would like to request that you try to do so in harmony with the philosophy of the blog, which is the search for a subtler and wiser approach to political thought and action. If you are going to post advocating for or against any particular bill, I’d like to see some analysis as well as a mere declaration that it’s bad and should be opposed. Ideally, you would include the arguments both for and against it, and explain why the arguments on your side are superior to the arguments on the other side. Colorado Confluence is intended to be a thoughtful blog, not a political ideological one. Mere advocacy of unexamined and undefended positions is, to me, the equivalent of spam. I know that this is somewhat different from the norm in both the blogosphere and in political activism, but it is my purpose in sponsoring this forum. Having said that, I look forward to your future informative posts, contributing to a robust dialogue about how better to order our shared existence.

    Thanks,

    Steve

    To all readers and potential contributors to Colorado Confluence: I am not trying to discourage participation, or to dictate what perspectives can and can’t be expressed, but rather to encourage participation that serves the purpose of the blog, which is to pursue a more intelligent and informed approach to forming our political positions. Any perspective is welcome, whether I agree with it or not, but I strongly prefer that posts be arguments or analyses of some kind, rather than mere political advertisements. Thanks so much!

    (A side note: I am not implying either support for or opposition to the bill that Demand Progress is citing. At a glance, given the depiction here, it would appear to have some significant flaws, but I would need more information to make that determination, as I hope would be the case for all of us. Demand Progress has presented an overly scrubbed, overly tilted representation, that does more to inflame than to inform. That is not what I am advocating on this blog.)

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