FCC links to Digg-like comments on Net neutrality inquiry

When the Federal Communications Commission resolved last week to begin drafting Net neutrality rules, Chairman Julius Genachowski promised that the agency would go out of its way to invite comments from all interested parties and make its rule-making process one of transparency.

“An open Internet deserves an open process,” he said.

In that spirit, the FCC has added some Web 2.0 bells and whistles to its OpenInternet.gov site, including a link to a third-party site hosted by Ideascale, which invites comments on the Net neutrality rule-making and allows visitors to vote them up or down with a Digg-like voting system.
Following the link from the FCC’s official site to brings up a disclaimer that the FCC doesn’t endorse the content on Ideascale, but the comments posted there (except for anonymous ones) will be entered into the official record of the rule-making process.

In case you were wondering which way the site is trending, as of this writing the comment at the top of the page with the most positive votes is authored by Tim Karr, the campaign director of Free Press. Karr, as you might imagine, tells the FCC, “The public demands the strongest network neutrality rule possible, without loopholes.”