Australian regulator says Musk's X should not set limits of internet law

Sydney: Elon Musk's X has policies to take down harmful content when it chooses but should not be allowed to overrule Australian law in deciding what can be viewed there, a lawyer for the cyber regulator told a hearing into video of a bishop being stabbed.

X, formerly Twitter, is fighting an order by the eSafety Commissioner to remove 65 posts showing video of an Assyrian Christian bishop being knifed mid-sermon in Sydney last month, in what authorities called a terrorist attack.

"X says ... global removal is reasonable when X does it, because X wants to do it, but it becomes unreasonable when X is told to do it by the laws of Australia," Tim Begbie, the lawyer, told a hearing of the Federal Court, Australia's second-highest.

Other platforms, such as Meta, took down the content quickly when asked, he said, adding that X had policies to remove very harmful content, as responsible services did.

But X's opposition to global removal could not be right as it would determine the definition of "reasonable" within the terms of Australia's Online Safety Act, he added.

The company Musk bought in 2022, with a declared mission to save free speech, says it has blocked Australia from seeing the posts but refuses to remove them globally on the grounds that one country's rules should not control the internet.

Begbie said the dispute was not a debate about free speech but rather about the practicality of the Australian law that gives the regulator power to protect citizens from the most objectionable content.

Geo-blocking Australians, the solution X offered, was ineffective because a quarter of the population used virtual private networks that disguise their locations, he added.

"Global removal in these circumstances is a reasonable step," he said. "It would achieve what parliament intended, which is no accessibility to end users in Australia."

X's lawyer, Bret Walker, said Australian laws left it open to interpretation what amounted to reasonable steps to protect the country from offensive content but the Musk-owned company had gone to reasonable lengths.

"The idea that it's better for the whole world not to see this obviously newsworthy matter, presumably to form their own views, and to consider the views of others ... is in our submission a startling one," he told the court.

"There should be much more than a ripple of apprehension that this country would take the approach that if this is the only way we can control what's available to end users in Australia, then it's a reasonable step to deny it to everybody on earth."

While the matter has been in court, Federal Court Judge Geoffrey Kennett has issued a temporary takedown order of the posts. On Friday he extended the temporary order to June 10 when he will give a final decision.