The “Open Internet” inquiry is one of the hottest potatoes at the Federal Communications Commission right now.
The commission wants you to know it is trying to make it easier to get involved. It is calling attention to “easy-to-use, interactive, collaborative web tools” that it has set up, which are becoming something of a signature of Chairman Genachowski’s immediate impact on the agency.
“The FCC has already established the OpenInternet.gov Web site as a portal for public participation in the discussion about preserving the free and open Internet,” it states in a news release.
“Among the links included on the site is one to Idealscale, which allows the public to evaluate, rank and discuss the ideas regarding the open Internet. The page breaks the discussion down into 10 open Internet topics that have generated widespread interest, including freedom of speech, innovation, transparency/disclosure and others.”
Also at OpenInternet.gov, you can visit a blog that provides an additional forum for comment and discussion. “Comments from the blog and the Ideascale page (other than anonymous comments) will be included in the official public record of the Open Internet inquiry, along with comments filed through traditional channels at the FCC,” the commission continued.
“And one of those traditional channels — the FCC’s Electronic Comment Filing System (ECFS) — became much easier to use and search this month with the launch of ECFS 2.0.”
Other recent efforts along these lines include a page with improved web-streaming capabilities for events including FCC meetings, as well as commission participation in Facebook, YouTube and Twitter. (The commission says 90,000 people are following its tweets.)
