Check out this article at Ars Technica about FMC's comments tool that helps musicians and fans tell the FCC how they use the open internet. Besides saying nice things about the tool itself (and noticing that it's not designed to elicit stock, form letter-style answers), the piece quotes R.E.M.'s testimony, which is all about how the open internet makes practically every aspect of communicating with fans easier and cheaper.
Reporter Nate Anderson reserves particular praise for Erin McKeown's submission. "The great virtue of McKeown's three-page comment," Anderson writes, "is the passion that infuses it; this is a working musician who plays 200 gigs a year and is absolutely dependent on the Internet to power her career."
We couldn't agree more.
You can check out artist comments from R.E.M., Kronos Quartet, Erin McKeown, Franz Nicolay of The Hold Steady right here. And we just heard that OK Go (who have a killer new album, by the way) have submitted!
But the real reason we created the comments tool is so YOU can share your own viewpoints with the FCC in their Notice of Proposed Rulemaking on Preserving an Open Internet. The deadline is Jan 14 (tomorrow!) so, if you wanna be part of the official record, you should get cracking.
