WIRELESS CONTROL

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXVI, 19 December 1935, Page 3

WIRELESS CONTROL

IMPORTANT JUDGMENT APPEAL DISMISSED WITH COSTS (United Press Association —By Electric Telegraph—Copyright) SYDNEY, 17th December. The Full Court to-day delivered an important judgment concerning the. right of the Commonwealth Government to control wireless broadcasting, deciding the issue in favour of the Government. The matter arose on an appeal by Mrs Duleie Williams against conviction for being in possession of an unlicensed receiving set. The Chief Justice, Sir John Latham, said the Commonwealth had power under the Constitution to control “postal, telegraphic, telephonic, and other like services.” These words undoubtedly empowered the Commonwealth 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 tlie receiving of a message this fact did not affect the truth of the proposition that 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 mechanical means of extending the range of natural hearing, whereas the expression of postal, telegraphic, and telephonic services possessed characteristics—altogether different characteristics from wireless broadcasting. The Court'dismissed the appeal with costs. ...