As countries in the Caribbean consider compulsory licensing legislation to protect the programming line-ups of their cable companies, Bermuda's Government has adopted a wait-and-see approach.

Compulsory licensing would allow Cablevision to show all of its programming, even channels it has no agreement for, legally. The company has tried to win such protection since 1989, when motion picture studios first pressured it to drop the channels it did not have permission to show.

Cablevision carried most of the channels anyway because it said it could not get permission for them, no matter how hard it tried or how much it offered to pay.

Cable Bahamas faced the same problem until two years ago, when legislation was passed that allowed the company to show and pay for the channels it could not receive legitimately.

Unfazed by US political pressure on the Bahamas, similar laws later passed in St. Lucia's parliament (they await enactment), while St. Kitts and Jamaica are considering the same approach.

But this week, Telecommunications Director Gregory Swan said Government has not even considered compulsory licensing, at least not officially.

"That has not been a topic of discussion," Mr. Swan said in a telephone interview.

Mr. Swan refused to go into more detail, citing a pending lawsuit filed against Cablevision in New York Supreme Court.

The suit alleges that Cablevision breached the copyrights of the studios by broadcasting their movies, via channels like HBO and Showtime, without permission.

Last month, Telecommunications & E-Commerce Minister Renee Webb said the Government was awaiting an outcome before tackling the copyright issue itself.

The lawsuit might be more justification for protecting Cablevision, counterparts in the Caribbean say. According to the Caribbean Cable Cooperative, the company is the only operator facing a lawsuit for "pirating" television signals, although most have been threatened.

Bill Ewing, the association's former chairman and president of The Cable in St. Kitts, conceded that the studio's decision to take legal action might have something to do with the $23 million Cablevision has allocated to pay programmers for channels for which it cannot reach agreements.

"There are no other operators that I know of in the same situation," Mr. Ewing said in a telephone interview yesterday. His company, which serves a fourth as many subscribers as Cablevision in a country where the average income is just $7,000 a year, has only just begun to put away money for unlicensed programming.

He and Mark Palchick, a lawyer representing the Caribbean cable operators in Washington, D.C., agreed that all countries in the region should adopt compulsory licensing legislation to protect their cable companies. They said claims by the United States government that compulsory copyright licensing of encrypted satellite signals contravened international law were incorrect.

Mr. Palchick added that once US companies realised they did not have a choice and every cable operator in the Caribbean had the backing of their governments, they would end what he described as a "boycott" of the region and "all of a sudden" find the resources to sell their products there.

The Caribbean Cable Co-op, Mr. Palchick's client, does not officially endorse compulsory licensing, preferring to negotiate with programmers.

"We should, however, use compulsory licensing to send a very clear and strong message that they should do something," said Howard Crotin, the organisations president, "and we have the World Trade Organisation and other courts on our side."

When Mr. Swan said government has no plans to follow the route others have advocated, he explained that there were "other things on the table that we are trying to resolve".

Like regulating the carrier, which will require rate and service changes to be approved by the Telecommunications commission. The change came after Cablevision stirred controversy when it announced that customers will need to rent set-top boxes to watch cable television.

Mr. Swan referred further queries to Cablevision's general manager, Jeremy Elmas, who deals with Government on behalf of his company. But Mr. Elmas, who assumed his position in January, said the company's lawyer, Allan Dunch of Mello Jones & Martin, was the only one who could answer questions. Mr. Dunch is off the Island until next week.

The copyright issue has been dormant, at least in the public eye, for more than a decade, which may explain Government's lack of action.

When the issue first came to the fore in the late 1980s, Government probed the legality of Cablevision's service and demanded to see contracts with US programmers. In September 1988, Sen. Charles Collis, the minister with responsibility for telecommunications, said he was satisfied that Cablevision was allowed to air HBO, The Movie Channel and Disney because the rights were given to its part-owner and management company, the Alabama-based McDonald Group, which ran several cable companies in the US. In response, the studios maintained that McDonald's rights were limited to the US.

Read about satellite, the alternative to cable, in tomorrow's Royal Gazette.