The Opposition United Bermuda Party (UBP) yesterday criticised Government for its involvement in a copyrights dispute between local broadcaster Bermuda Broadcasting Company (BBC) and CableVision - drawing serious fire from television executive Rick Richardson.

Meanwhile, the two companies are still not seeing eye to eye on the issue of damages and compensation.

After an hour-long meeting between the two, BBC CEO Rick Richardson said that while CableVision remained unconvinced that compensation is due his company, Government was "committed to the survival of the industry".

The row between the two companies over television broadcast rights has been going on for over a dozen years and is now being brokered by the Department of Telecommunications.

But the Opposition United Bermuda Party (UBP) is questioning why the Government is involved at all.

"It just seems strange to me that the ministry would be brokering a deal between two corporate entities," said shadow Telecommunications Minister Alan Marshall. "It's more deals behind more closed doors."

He said the court system was the best place to resolve the issue and if the appropriate legislation is not in place then that should be addressed by the Ministry of Telecommunications.

"They (Government) are doing too many things behind closed doors... If a party has a complaint they should use the judicial system."

Mr. Richardson said successive UBP Governments had dropped the ball on the years' long dispute and inadequate legislation was at the root of it.

While existing regulations make it an offence to violate copyright agreements, no penalties are specified, he explained.

As the industry's regulator, he added, Government had a responsibility to assist.

"I think the Government is trying to say - very diplomatically - let's see how we can handle this ?'" Mr. Richardson said.

"The existing regulations were drafted by the UBP and they had consultants that told them it was inadequate and ambiguous. This Government cannot just sit by and leave it. They must level the playing field, they must correct the problems. They have to address it and they must also address inadequate legislation, old legislation that the previous minister failed to tackle."

He added: "I would be surprised if this Government did not address it - we have waited 13 years to have it fixed. So yes, fix it. Meanwhile we go broke fixing it. The Government is trying to facilitate. The Government is not dictating."

He agreed that a Government brokered resolution could point the way forward to legislative reform.

Telecommunications director Gregory Swan told The Royal Gazette that his department is looking out for the best interests of the public.

"The meetings are going relatively well," Mr. Swan said. "Ideally what we are trying to do is establish some type of resolution between the parties so the public is not shortchanged in the process. Our intention is to try to ensure the viability of the networks."

He confirmed that the parties met yesterday morning to continue talks which took off in earnest about eight months ago.

"What I can say is that based on past experience we have made progress - if you look at the Olympic coverage we were able to establish agreement between the parties and the public has reaped the benefits."

He added that CableVision has recently been blacking out programs to which the BBC has exclusive local broadcast rights. "That's a far cry from the past," Mr. Swan said.

For the BBC the issue is critical to its financial viability. The company claims that advertiser confidence has plummeted over the years because it could not guarantee that programmes to which they had exclusive local broadcast rights would not show up on cable.

This week CEO Rick Richardson said programming piracy had been draining his company of revenue over a number of years and that, plus adverse economic conditions, was the reason why wages at the company had been frozen for the last three years.

Staff members held a sit out Monday afternoon to draw attention to their grievances.

Mr. Richardson held a one hour meeting with his staff during which he detailed the 13 year dispute with CableVision.

CableVision, which is facing a multimillion dollar lawsuit from a group of US motion picture companies alleging piracy of their products, issued a statement saying they were unaware of any unresolved issues with BBC and added that it has always been prepared to respect the local broadcaster's exclusive rights agreements.

General manager Jeremy Elmas did not respond to requests by this newspaper for clarification of their statement - issued just one day before yesterday's meeting was originally scheduled to take place.

The company also dismissed as "without foundation" BBC's claims that their actions had caused them to lose money.

"I challenge them to say to Mel Ming (Sesame Street executive) that they have not received any notification," said Mr. Richardson.

"I challenge them to say this is the first time they are hearing this and there are no damages."

CableVision recently agreed to block out Sesame Street, the popular children's television programme, as well as Sixty Minutes and Oprah - acknowledging that BBC does have exclusive broadcasting rights to the shows.