51吃瓜网

SYDNEY – An Australian court upheld a regulator’s fine against Elon Musk’s social media company X Corp., after it admitted to violating the law by failing to supply information ?about its online child protection measures, ending a nearly three-year dispute.

After ?the ?eSafety regulator, a frequent target of online attacks by ?Musk, fined the company in October 2023 for what it called an inadequate response to a standard request for information about anti-child ?exploitation processes, the company resolved the dispute on Thursday by admitting wrongdoing.

“The respondent ?admits that it contravened the act,” said Christopher Tran, a lawyer for the eSafety commissioner, referring to Australia’s Online Safety ?Act, in a Federal ?Court hearing. “There was ongoing noncompliance for some 38 days.”

The resolution ends a legal battle which began ?when the regulator fined ?the company formerly called Twitter 610,500 Australian dollars ($437,000) over ?its answers to some 25 questions.

X initially sought ?to overturn ?the penalty on grounds that the company had changed its name since being acquired by Musk for $44 billion in 2022. The regulator later took a separate legal action to recover ?the fine.

On Thursday, Judge Michael Wheelahan raised the payout to AU$650,000 and ordered X to pay another AU$100,000 to cover some of the regulator’s legal costs. The resolution ties up a loose end for the company ?which ?earlier this year was folded into Musk’s sprawling technology conglomerate ?SpaceX ahead of a planned trillion-dollar initial public offering within weeks.

?Perry Herzfeld, a lawyer for X,?said the dispute boiled down to “historic issues relating to the timeliness of provision of information.”

The contravening conduct took place during a “period of change and transition for the company,“?he ?told the court.

Tran, the eSafety lawyer, acknowledged there was no loss resulting from X’s actions but said that “not providing information when requested by a regulator impedes a regulator when doing her work.”