Rights Without Remedies: The Absence of Intermediary Liability and Notice-and-Takedown Mechanisms in Tanzania's Copyright Law, and Lessons from Kenya, Nigeria and Uganda

Tanzania’s Copyright and Neighbouring Rights Act, Cap. 218 R.E. 2023, confers broad and technologically neutral exclusive rights that are capable of reaching online reproduction, distribution and communication to the public, but it contains no provision on intermediary liability, no notice-and-takedown procedure and no copyright-specific cross-border notice-and-takedown or intermediary-compliance mechanism. Tanzanian law is nevertheless not without a route against platform-mediated infringement. The Cybercrimes Act, 2015 allows any person to notify infringing material (section 45); the Cybercrimes (General) Regulations, 2016 require a response within 24 hours (regulation 7); and the Online Content Regulations, 2020 oblige online content hosts to ensure that prohibited contents, which include content infringing intellectual property rights, are removed upon notification by the Authority or affected party (regulation 15). This article undertakes a doctrinal and comparative analysis of whether that framework is adequate to regulate and enforce copyright protection against platform-mediated online infringement. The article finds that the framework provides a general legal route for takedown and conditional intermediary protections, but that its statutory design lacks a coherent copyright-specific procedure with clear standards, counter-notice safeguards and an expressly assigned institutional role. The article recommends a copyright-specific conditional safe-harbor regime in the Copyright Act that builds on, and for copyright displaces, the existing cybercrime route: a prescribed notice, objective removal standards, a counter-notice and restoration procedure, a statutory role for the Copyright Office of Tanzania (COSOTA), a civil compliance and liability framework alongside the existing offences, and a 72-hour default period for screening, notifying the uploader and taking initial action.