claimed restrictions have not been proved on the balance of probability. Therefore, the
contention of failure of the Respondents to contradict the Petitioner's testimony on
restrictions is without merit.
According to Mr Seka, Advocate for the Petitioner, the 2nd Respondent, being the
regulator and controller of the cyberspace in Tanzania, has denied through paragraph 7 of
the Counter affidavit without more; that they are
not
responsible
for the
ongoing
restriction; raises a lo t of eyebrows. He went on submitting that from the response in
paragraph 7 of the counter affidavit, the Respondents are saying; we do not know who
within Tanzania is restricting access to Clubhouse. In the views of the learned counsel, the
Respondents are suggesting that the Petitioner and the court should ask the Clubhouse
Developers why their platform is only available in Tanzania via VPNs. We think it crucial to
pause a bit and explore this point in detail.
The Respondents' argument that they are not the developers of the Clubhouse social
media app hence they are unable to restrict its accessibility and availability can only be given
by a person who is not technologically savvy. The regulator (TCRA) with the resources it has
including the IT experts with technical know-how as well as the technologies at their disposal,
can throttle, degrade or block content, app, or network traffic from being accessible to
anyone in Tanzanian's cyberspace. This is what is called regulation of technology through
technology. Also known as code, it is the law as coined by Professor Lawrence Lessig in his
groundbreaking book Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace, 1999. Code here means
computer programs or software architecture that controls human behaviour. It is an
architecture of technology that can disable certain human behaviours in cyberspace. The code
that can block or disable the Internet user to access certain content or website, app, or
traffic. That extends to the Clubhouse audio platform. There could be good and lawful
intentions for blocking certain content, traffic, or Internet Protocol addresses. It may be part
of traffic management for network security reasons or for disabling access to prohibited
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