Judge extends ban on bishop-stabbing video

A JUDGE has doubled down on a ban on videos of the stabbing of a bishop in his church last month, after government lawyers condemned Elon Musk’s free speech argument for keeping the graphic footage online.

Australian Federal Court Justice Geoffrey Kennett extended his order that X Corp, the firm rebranded by Mr Musk when he bought Twitter, block users from sharing videos of the April 15 attack.

The incident led to terrorismrelated charges for the alleged attacker, a teenager, and triggered a riot outside the church in Sydney.

The order has existed since April 22 and Mr Kennett will decide on Monday whether it will continue in its current form. X is alone among social media platforms in fighting a notice from Australia’s eSafety Commission – which describes itself as the world’s first government agency dedicated to keeping people safer online – to take down the video of the attack during an Assyrian Orthodox service streamed online. A bishop and priest were injured but both survived.

Mr Musk has accused Australia of censorship and has applied to the Federal Court to overturn the eSafety notice. The court will sit on Wednesday to consider setting a hearing date for X’s application.

An eSafety lawyer, Tim Begbie, yesterday described X in court as a ‘market leader in distributing violent content’. X lawyer Bret Walker said it had taken reasonable steps to block the content from Australia but said there had been glitches.