[Aftld-members] REMINDER | DASC SURVEY.

[secretariat at aftld.org]

Greetings,

This is a reminder to participate in the DNS Abuse survey. The survey 
closes tomorrow, Friday 13 September 2024 and so far none of the ccTLDs 
from the African Region has responded to the survey.

For more details, including the link to the survey, see the announcement 
here:
https://ccnso.icann.org/en/announcements/announcement-09aug24-en.htm

Nick Wenban-Smith, DASC Chair, explains why all ccTLD managers should 
seriously consider participating in this survey:

“Firstly, the DASC was set up to enable the ccTLD community to take the 
initiative on DNS Abuse related issues. You will recall that previously 
other parts of the community (usual suspects) were attempting to fill 
this void and pedalling unhelpful (if not downright inaccurate) 
information about what ccTLDs were (or were not) doing to combat DNS 
Abuse. Giving us collateral to present positively and proactively on the 
topic helps us to keep hold of the agenda and stop others from 
overstepping their boundaries. As we saw from the first survey data in 
2022, this was very successful.

Secondly, as you have already stated, the ccTLDs actually have a really 
strong position on DNS Abuse from which to speak. But we need to go out 
on the front foot and advocate for ourselves, no-one else is going to do 
it for us. You can see from the wider community discussion topics that 
this is a high interest area, especially from governments and 
regulators. It is in our own self-interest to highlight our strengths 
and therefore to preserve our independence as ccTLDs from potential 
unwelcome external governance, regulation and censorship. It is always a 
real pleasure to be able to state that observed abuse levels in ccTLDs 
are generally 10x less than gTLDs for example.

Finally, as the survey authors we were well aware that there may be some 
questions that ccTLD managers are not comfortable answering, even though 
the survey responses are only presented in anonymised aggregate data 
sets. And that is perfectly fine. For this reason, the questions are 
pretty much all optional, you don't have to answer any questions which 
(for whatever reasons) you do not wish to answer.”

Regards,
AfTLD Secretariat.