(Sydney) Australian authorities announced Wednesday the abandonment of their legal proceedings against the social network X to force it to remove videos showing a knife attack in a Sydney church.
“I have decided to terminate the proceedings initiated in the Federal Court against X Corp,” Julie Inman Grant, head of the online security regulator eSafety, wrote in a statement.
This organization had ordered Elon Musk’s social network to remove in Australia and the rest of the world some 65 videos and audio showing a priest being stabbed several times during a sermon broadcast live in mid-April.
X had challenged the authority’s right to order a global takedown, arguing that geoblocking users in Australia was sufficient.
The watchdog had argued, however, that the measures taken by X were easily circumvented by using a virtual private network (VPN) or other location masking service.
“This case has raised important questions about how judicial powers can be used to threaten global censorship of speech, and we are pleased to see freedom of expression prevail,” X responded in a published statement on its own platform.
In a separate post, billionaire Elon Musk said “free speech is worth fighting for.”
The decision by the Australian Internet Safety Commissioner comes after a setback suffered by eSafety in mid-May, when X obtained the suspension of an injunction to remove these videos worldwide.
“Our sole objective in making our removal request was to prevent this extremely violent footage from going viral, potentially inciting further violence and causing further harm to the Australian community,” Ms.me Inman Grant, herself a former Twitter employee.
Avant-garde
The publications at the heart of this legal standoff show the bishop of an Assyrian church, Mar Mari Emmanuel, being stabbed in the head and chest by a 16-year-old teenager. The clergyman had narrowly escaped death.
According to the commissioner, most Australians accept that such content should not be broadcast on television. Which “raises the obvious question of why (this type of content) should be allowed to be freely distributed and accessible online 24/7 to everyone, including children,” he said. she declared.
Mme Inman Grant claimed that
Other major platforms have complied with the Australian watchdog’s requests and takedown notices related to the attack on the priest, she noted, including Meta, Microsoft, Google, Snap, TikTok, Reddit and Telegram.
“The video violated their rules and standards of decency,” she noted.
Since an online safety law passed in 2021, Australia has been at the forefront of efforts to call for tech giants to be held accountable for what their users post online.