MELBOURNE ā An Australian judge Monday lifted a ban on the social media platform X showing Australians a video of a bishop being stabbed in a Sydney church.
The temporary ban was put in place April 22, but the judge rejected the application from Australiaās eSafety Commission to extend the court order that would have expired Monday.
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Australian Federal Court Justice Geoffrey Kennett said he would publish his reasons for imposing and lifting the order later.
The decision was a win for the company rebranded by billionaire Elon Musk when he bought Twitter l ast year. X was alone among social media platforms in refusing to remove video of Bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel being stabbed. Musk has argued that he is standing up for a freedom of speech principle. Australian lawmakers have accused him of arrogance and of lacking a sense of social responsibility.
āNot trying to win anything. I just donāt think we should be suppressing Australianās rights to free speech," Musk posted on X after the ruling.
X is also taking a separate court action against eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant, a former Twitter employee, that challenges the validity of her notice requiring the platform to remove video of the April 15 attack in an Assyrian Orthodox church. The judge is expected to consider setting a hearing date Wednesday.
Assistant Treasurer Stephen Jones said the government might consider changing Australian law after reading Kennettās reasons for removing his order that required X to hide the video from users. āThereās a fundamental principle at stake and that is, if youāre a company or anybody operating in Australia, then youāve got to abide by Australian laws,ā Jones said.
He also said the government supported Inman Grantās stance on the video. "She made the right decision in our view to ensure that that dangerous, violent, harmful material wasnāt being propagated online and encouraging and inciting that sort of behavior here in Australia,ā Jones said.
A 16-year-old boy was charged with terrorism-related offenses in the stabbings of the bishop and a priest who were injured in the attack.
X has geoblocked Australian users from the content, but eSafety wants a worldwide ban on the video, which can be still accessed from Australia through VPNs.
An eSafety lawyer, Tim Begbie, described X in court last week as a āmarket leader in proliferating and distributing violent content and violent and extremist material.ā
Begbie said Australia could not be expected to conform to Xās āpro-free speech stance.ā
āThe fact is that that stance is in large measure illusory. Because X doesnāt stand for āglobal removal is badā in some pure sense,ā Begbie said.
Xās own policies repeatedly refer to circumstances in which the platform will elect to remove content globally, Begbie said.
āThe real position is this: X says that āreasonableā means what X wants it to mean,ā Begbie said.
āGlobal 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,ā Begbie added.
X lawyer Bret Walker said X had taken reasonable steps to block the content from Australia but there had been glitches.
He described eSafetyās demand for a global ban as astonishing and the notice as invalid.
āYou donāt expect to see statutes saying the Australian Parliament will regulate what concerning Australia ā that is events in Australia ā can be viewed in Russia, Finland, Belgium or the United States,ā Walker said.
āNot unless we want to become isolationist to a degree that is unthinkable,ā Walker added.