The Federal Court has ordered X Corp, which goes by its old name Twitter, to obey an Australian notice that requires it to publish information about child sexual abuse material before its rebranding exercise.
The notice was issued by the eSafety Commissioner of Australia to Twitter and a case filed by X Corp against a hefty fine imposed in September 2023 has been dismissed.
X Sanctioned Over Failure to Provide Online Safety Information
Based on the audit, an AS$ 610,500 ($418,000) fine is founded on X Corp's lack of provision of necessary information concerning its management of online safety issues, especially those concerning child sexual exploitation and abuse material that appears on the platform.
This was a requirement by the eSafety Commissioner who sought the information in order to enforce basic minimum expectations of online safety in Australia on X Corp. The company, however, refused to respond to the notice imposed on it.
According to News.com.au, the microblogging company also argued that the notice was deemed invalid because it had no obligation to obey due to the company not technically being in existence when the notice was sent to Twitter.
The notice of transparency was served on Twitter in February 2023, and X Corp was incorporated in March 2023 after Elon Musk purchased Twitter Inc.
Arguments by X Corp Overruled by Federal Court
The decision was made in a brief 30-minute hearing at the Federal Court in Melbourne when Justice Michael Wheelahan dismissed X Corp's application. The case concluded that the name change from Twitter to X Corp couldn't exempt the company from its obligations. Meaning, X Corp has to pay the legal fees incurred by the eSafety Commissioner.
"Had X Corp's argument been accepted by the Court it could have set the concerning precedent that a foreign company's merger with another foreign company might enable it to avoid regulatory obligations in Australia," eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant said in a statement, as per Reuters.
Finally, the judgment will remind this court and everybody else that the change of name and corporate restructuring or rebranding cannot be a defense for not complying with regulatory obligations.
In this case, X Corp remains liable for fulfilling the online safety expectations provided by the Australian government despite the change of its name and restructuring of ownership.
Legal Disputes Between X Corp and eSafety Continue
This is one of a spate of legal tussles between X Corp and the Australian eSafety Commissioner. Perhaps the most high-profile of these is a video that showed a stabbing in a Sydney church; there, X Corp successfully defended against an order from eSafety to take down the clip. That case was withdrawn by the commission in June, but disputes between X Corp and eSafety are still being contested in both the Federal Court and the Administrative Appeals Tribunal.
These legal cases surfaced after Elon Musk acquired Twitter Inc and merged it with X Corp, thereby restructuring the company, which has since then faced a myriad of challenges and run-ins with regulatory bodies.
Back in October 2023, the Musk-owned firm paid a $386,000 fine in an Australian child abuse probe.
