The eSafety Commissioner is to receive strengthened powers to protect Australians from exposure to harmful, illegal online content, no matter where in the world it is hosted.
eSafety Commissioner, Julie Inman Grant said updates to the Commission’s Online Content Scheme would empower her to issue removal notices to take down illegal content that was accessible to Australians, including child sexual exploitation and terrorist material.
“Australia’s Online Content Scheme has been in operation for over 20 years and through it we have been very successful within our own borders, to the point that very little if any child sexual exploitation material is actually hosted in Australia,” Commissioner Inman Grant said.
“But of course, Australians are still exposed to this very harmful material through sites and apps that operate from more permissive hosting environments overseas,” she said.
“In 2020, we received over 21,000 public reports through our Online Content Scheme, the majority of which involved child sexual exploitation material.”
Commissioner Inman Grant said this was the highest number of public reports in the Scheme’s 20-year history and a 90 per cent increase compared to 2019.
“Sadly, we have seen a continuation of this elevated level in 2021 and it represents a new normal,” she said.
“With these new powers, we will now be able to take real action to disrupt the trade in this distressing material and if online service providers fail to comply with our removal notices, they will face very real and significant consequences.”
She said that, under updates to the Scheme, service providers who failed to comply with an eSafety removal notice would face financial penalties of up to $111,000 per offence for individuals and $555,000 for corporations.
Commissioner Inman Grant said the services may also have their content delinked from search engines and their apps removed from app stores if they failed to comply.
“As a last resort, where a service is deemed to pose a serious threat to the safety of Australians, eSafety may also apply for a Federal Court order that the provider of a particular social media service, relevant electronic service, designated internet service, or internet carriage service stop providing that service in Australia.”
She said eSafety had also been empowered to request or require an internet service provider to block material that promoted, incited or instructed in abhorrent violent conduct, including manifestos like the one produced and shared by the Christchurch gunman.
Commissioner Inman Grant said updates to the Scheme would come into effect on Sunday (23 January), when the new Online Safety Act 2021 came into force.
