Lesotho
AI behavior law: bot and agent disclosure, crawler and training-data rules, automated-agent transactions, and algorithmic decision-making.
Summary
Lesotho presents a moderate-but-underenforced legal landscape for web crawling. The Data Protection Act No. 5 of 2012 (signed 2011, gazetted 22 February 2012) applies to any processing of personal data, but its dedicated Data Protection Commission has never been appointed, leaving enforcement to courts alone. The cybercrime legislative situation is uncertain and fast-moving. The Computer Crime and Cyber Security Bill 2022 was passed by the National Assembly but its Senate and royal assent status is unconfirmed; a revised Computer Crime and Cyber Security Bill 2024 was tabled in the National Assembly in May 2024 and was still under active deliberation as of late 2024 amid significant civil society opposition. It is unclear whether a cybercrime Act is currently in force. Lesotho is a common-law jurisdiction modelled on Roman-Dutch and English law. No sui generis database right. No scraping case law. Public-page crawling of non-personal data is low risk; collecting personal data requires a lawful basis under the 2012 Act even absent a functioning regulator. Confidence kept low pending clarification of cybercrime Act commencement status.
Automated-access legality
Carried forward from the crawler-law index. Governs whether automated clients may access public websites in this jurisdiction.
| Dimension | Value |
|---|---|
| Authorization test | without permission |
| Public-page carve-out | unsettled |
| Terms-of-service browsewrap enforceable | notice dependent |
| Terms-of-service clickwrap enforceable | yes |
| Copyright exception model | fair dealing narrow |
| Text and data mining — commercial status | unsettled |
| Text and data mining — opt-out mechanism | none |
| robots.txt legal weight | non binding notice |
| AI training-specific law | none |
| Privacy regime | Data Protection Act No. 5 of 2012 (unenforced — Commission never appointed) |
| Trespass to chattels | not recognized |
Last reviewed: 2026-05-24. Confidence: low. Not legal advice.