(The Minnesota Star Tribune)
Justin Bieber: Klobuchar should be 'locked up'
Pop star Justin Bieber said that he thought Sen. Amy Klobuchar should be "put away in cuffs" for a web streaming bill.
By jeremyherb
October 28, 2011 at 4:37PM
A teen pop superstar wants to throw Sen. Amy Klobuchar in jail.
Pop sensation Justin Bieber said that he thought Klobuchar should be "locked up" for a bill she's proposed that would make it a felony to profit from streaming unlicensed online content.
Bieber was asked by a Washington-area radio host about the bill, which opponents argue could send people like Bieber to jail for uploading videos to YouTube.
Bieber didn't appear to know much on the issue — he first thought Klobuchar was a "guy" — but when the radio host said the Minnesota Democrat was trying to make "unauthorized web streaming of copyrighted material a felony," it clearly hit a nerve.
"Whoever she is, she needs to know that I'm saying she needs to be locked up, put away in cuffs," said Bieber, who first gained his fame by singing cover songs that went viral on YouTube.
A group opposing Klobuchar's bill has used Bieber as its poster child, creating a website called freebeiber.org that claims the bill would send him to prison for five years.
But Klobuchar spokeswoman Brigit Helgen said Bieber would have nothing to fear under Klobuchar's bill, which only targets people seeking to make a profit through web streaming, not users uploading videos to YouTube.
"Justin Bieber must have been misled about the content of this bill," Helgen said in a statement. "It's not about people posting their personal work on the web... The bill only covers the intentional commercial theft of things like books, commercial music, and movies, including foreign piracy."
Listen to audio of the Bieber interview below:
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