Copyright and COSOTA: What Registration Does and Does Not Give You

This page is the copyright and COSOTA operating file: what a business must own on paper, and what a register entry is worth, before it licenses, sells or defends a creative asset. It is not a music-contract precedent, nor an advocate’s opinion.

• Trading name, not artwork: business name registration
• Getting the company itself registered: BRELA sequence and documents
• What the setup file actually needs: is a business plan required
• User data behind a platform: PDPC registration

As at 14 September 2026. Confirm the live position at cosota.go.tz and, for the islands, with COSOZA; this file rests on Cap. 218, the Berne Convention and the tax instruments named below.

The statute makes the right; the Society keeps the book

Cap. 218 protects literary, musical and artistic works, audiovisual works, sound recordings and broadcasts, and treats computer programs as literary works. The right attaches on creation and fixation in material form. Nothing is lodged anywhere to bring it into existence, and a lapsed membership does not end it.

COSOTA is a creature of that same statute, carrying two mandates operators keep collapsing into one: it maintains the registers of works, productions, authors, performers, producers and associations, and it licenses users, sets tariffs and distributes royalties. Lodging a work is the first. Being paid is the second, and neither follows from the other.

Copyright is not a Union matter. Zanzibar legislates for itself, and the Copyright Society of Zanzibar runs the island register and tariff. A Dar es Salaam certificate is not a COSOZA entry; a producer distributing in Unguja and Pemba answers there.

Four different things people call registering

Most confusion here is one word doing four jobs. The counter treats them as separate files with separate consequences.

A composer who joins and never notifies the catalogue is a member with nothing to distribute against. A company that notifies a logo without a signed deed from the designer has registered somebody else’s property.

What the certificate carries, and what it withholds

The certificate is evidence, and evidence beats an opponent holding none. It fixes a date, names a claimant and states declared shares between co-authors. In a suit it shifts the argument from proving you wrote the thing to proving the entry is wrong. Customs officers, banks valuing a catalogue and broadcasters pricing a synchronisation all ask to see it.

• It does not test originality. The Society records a declaration; it does not examine the work as BRELA examines a mark.
• It does not settle contested title. A rival with a dated commissioning contract and working drafts beats a bare entry.
• It does not reach beyond Tanzania. Protection abroad comes from national treatment across the Berne Union.
• It can be rectified or cancelled, so it decides nothing permanently.

Who owns a work the company paid for

This is where money is lost. Payment is not assignment. Economic rights move only by an instrument in writing signed by whoever gives them up; an invoice marked paid in full and a bank transfer are not that instrument. A photographer, a freelance developer and a session musician keep what they made until a deed says otherwise.

Cap. 218 treats works made in employment and works made on commission separately, and that default is exactly what a drafted contract should override. Put an assignment clause in the employment contract and in every engagement letter, name the works and the territory, and require a separate deed on request.

Moral rights do not move. The right to be identified as author, and to object to distortion, survives the sale of every economic right. An advertiser recutting a composer’s track beyond recognition has a problem no assignment cured.

How long the right runs

For a literary, musical or artistic work Cap. 218 runs economic rights for the author’s life plus 50 years; joint works run from the death of the last surviving author. Anonymous works, audiovisual works, sound recordings, performances and broadcasts each carry their own clock, counted from making or publication rather than a death. Read the term for the actual category before pricing anything.

A ten-year exclusive over a catalogue whose writers died decades ago may cover material entering the public domain mid-term. A buyer should be given each author’s date of death; a selling estate should know that the administrator signs, not the family spokesman.

The order the desks take it

1. Fix and date the work. A manuscript, score, master file or layered artwork with metadata intact is the evidence; the certificate only points at it.
2. Settle title on paper first. Signed deeds from every contributor, a split sheet for joint works, a board resolution where the company is claimant.
3. Pick the register you are in. Mainland, islands, or both where the release is national.
4. Apply in the correct category: author, composer, performer, producer or publisher. A producer filing as an author is sent back.
5. Notify each work separately, with a copy in fixed form, declared shares, and the date and place of first publication.
6. Lodge the deed so the register shows the current holder, not the original author.
7. Take stamps before pressing or importing copies for sale, matching quantity to the replication order.
8. Open the tariff conversation. Membership without one produces a certificate and no income.

The pack the counter reconciles

The live checklist governs and it moves. What it has consistently wanted is a claimant it can identify, a work it can see, and a chain of title it can follow.

For an individual: the membership application in the right category, a certified copy of the NIDA national identity card or passport, passport photographs, and contact details matching the account royalties will reach. For a company: the BRELA certificate of incorporation, the TIN, a board resolution naming the signatory, and the bank mandate.

For each work: the work in fixed form; title and genre; names and shares of all authors, composers, arrangers and performers; first publication details; and, where rights have moved, the signed deed or exclusive licence. For commercial recordings: producer registration and the stamp application, stating the pressing or import quantity.

A name spelled differently across the identity document, the extract, the deed and the bank mandate is the commonest reason a file sits.

Money on a licence: withholding, VAT and levy

A royalty is a taxed receipt. Under the Income Tax Act Cap. 332 royalties carry withholding at 15%, deducted by the payer, who issues a certificate the recipient credits. Where the licensor is registered, the licence is a taxable supply at the standard rate of 18% under the Value Added Tax Act Cap. 148. Turnover attracts service levy at 0.3% under the Local Government Finance Act Cap. 290. Confirm the live schedule on tra.go.tz before signing.

Illustrative arithmetic, not a quotation. A catalogue owner licenses a broadcaster for TZS 48,000,000 a year.

• VAT adds TZS 8,640,000, so the invoice reads TZS 56,640,000: that addition is collected for TRA, not earned.
• The broadcaster withholds TZS 7,200,000 from the royalty and issues the certificate.
• Cash received is TZS 49,440,000.
• Service levy on the TZS 48,000,000 is TZS 144,000 to the municipal council.
• The TZS 7,200,000 withheld is credited against corporate tax at 30%, not lost.

A blanket licence invoiced by the Society is a different transaction from a direct catalogue deal, and a member’s distribution is its own tax event.

Logos, software and the BRELA overlap

A logo is usually two rights at once. As a drawing it is an artistic work and can sit in the copyright register. As a badge of trade origin it is a mark under the Trade and Service Marks Act Cap. 326, examined by BRELA, and only that registration stops a competitor using a confusingly similar sign on the same goods.

A business name gives less again: it reserves a trading name and touches neither artwork nor tagline. Software is protected as expression, not function; function belongs to the Patents (Registration) Act Cap. 217 if anywhere. A platform holding user data adds a third desk under the Personal Data Protection Act.

Where this file stalls

• A company pays a freelance designer, takes no deed, and finds him named against the artwork when the rebrand starts.
• A band notifies a hit under one member’s name, writes no split sheet, and distribution freezes until shares are agreed.
• A distributor presses copies before applying for stamps, and the consignment is detained.
• An island producer treats a Mainland certificate as island cover and meets COSOZA’s tariff in a demand letter.
• A broadcaster with a blanket licence assumes it covers a track in a client’s advertisement.
• A deed is signed but never lodged, the author dies, and the estate resells the catalogue to a buyer who checks the register and finds the author still named.
• A contractor abroad delivers source code under a purchase order carrying no assignment clause.

Mandate-holders this file does not replace

COSOTA owns the Mainland register, the tariffs and the stamps; COSOZA owns those functions on the islands. BRELA owns marks under Cap. 326, patents under Cap. 217, companies under the Companies Act Cap. 212 and business names. The Fair Competition Commission runs the counterfeit route under the Merchandise Marks Act, with TRA Customs at the border. TRA owns the withholding, the VAT and the import file. BASATA licenses artists, the Tanzania Film Board clears film content, and TCRA licenses the broadcaster.

An injunction, a search order or a criminal complaint is advocate work in the High Court, Commercial Division. Zatra prepares the pack, reconciles the chain of title and coordinates those desks; it does not practise law, audit or issue approvals, and no result at any register is promised.

What to confirm before you act

• That every contributor’s transfer is written, signed and dated before release, and names the works.
• The membership category, the live checklist at cosota.go.tz, and whether the islands belong here too.
• Duration for the precise class of work, read off the statute, not assumed from the author clock.
• Declared shares between co-authors, matched to the split sheet and the payout account.
• Whether the release needs stamps, and whether BASATA or Film Board clearance sits in front of it.
• Whether the logo needs a Cap. 326 application at BRELA alongside the copyright entry.
• The withholding, VAT and levy treatment of the royalty with TRA before the first invoice.