RADIO CONTROL.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LVI, Issue 17, 18 December 1935, Page 9

RADIO CONTROL.

IMPORTANT JUDGMENT. SYDNEY, Dec. 17. The full High Court to-day delivered an important judgment concerning the right of tjio Commonwealth Government to control wireless broadcasting deciding the issue in favour of the Government. The mater arose on an appeal by Mrs Dulcie Williams against her conviction for being in possession of an unlicensed receiving set. The Chief Justice (Sir John Latham) said tlie Commonwealth had power under the Constitution to control “postal, telegraphic, telephonic and other like services.”' These words undoubtedly empowered the Commomwealth to control that form of wireless telephony known as broadcasting. The word message was something which might be transmitted and received as distinguished from communications between persons who were face to face, and even if the reception of a wireless musical programme was not the receiving of a message this fact did not affect the truth of the proposition that the reception of wireless speech was the reception of a message in the sense in which the word had long been used in connection with telegraphy and telephony. Mr Justice Dixon, dissenting, held that broadcast programmes did not constitute messages. Wireless sets, were a mechanical means of extending tho range of natural hearing, whereas the expression postal, telegraphic and telephonic services possessed definite characteristics —altogether different from the characteristics of wireless broadcasting. The Court dismissed the appeal with costs.