Broadcasting in UK Law

The charges against Ms Murphy were that on 19 th August 2006 and on 25 th September 2006 she "dishonestly received a programme included in a broadcasting service provided from a place in the United Kingdom with intent to avoid payment of any charge applicable to the reception of the programme".

The question is to be answered by identifying what is said to be the "programme included in a broadcasting service", then determining where that broadcasting service is provided from. In the present case, there is no doubt that the core of the transmissions received by Ms Murphy, the visual images and the ambient sound of the matches themselves, was transmitted for simultaneous reception by members of the public and was capable of being lawfully received by them from BSkyB.

But where Parliament has conferred on the executive an administrative discretion without indicating the precise limits within which it must be exercised, to presume that it must be exercised within Convention limits would be to go far beyond the resolution of an ambiguity.

Nevertheless the European Court of Human Rights unanimously found an infringement of Article 10, mainly (it seems) because of the monopoly positions enjoyed in Switzerland by a single public broadcasting corporation and a single company controlling television commercials. The judgment does not, with respect, give full or clear reasons for what seems to be a far-reaching conclusion.

The great majority are performed on the third of the five permitted grounds under the Abortion Act 1967 as amended: that is that the continuance of the pregnancy would involve risk, greater than if the pregnancy were terminated, of injury to the physical or mental health of the pregnant woman.

Understandably Parliament has given to the BSC a broad licence as to how they exercise their judgment and discretion. The nature of its work and its membership are important when considering the role of the courts in relation to adjudications by the BSC. What constitutes an infringement of privacy or bad taste or a failure to conform to proper standards of decency is very much a matter of personal judgment. This is not an area on which the courts are well equipped to adjudicate.

To my mind the privacy of a human being denotes at the same time the personal "space" in which the individual is free to be itself, and also the carapace, or shell, or umbrella, or whatever other metaphor is preferred, which protects that space from intrusion. An infringement of privacy is an affront to the personality, which is damaged both by the violation and by the demonstration that the personal space is not inviolate.