Government is planning to make Bermuda Cablevision a scheduled carrier, meaning its prices and use of technology will be regulated for the first time.

And the Attorney General's Chambers is looking at changing the company's regulations to allow Government to shut down Cablevision channels if it does not have a copyright agreement with suppliers.

Eight of the world's leading movie producers, including Disney, Time Warner, and Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation, filed a multi-million dollar lawsuit in the United States in June claiming Cablevision had been pirating services from them since 1988 and has fraudulently claimed its 16,000 customers are residents in the US.

Telecommunications Minister Renee Webb said Cablevision told her that it did not have copyright agreements with its US suppliers for ten stations, but was working to settle this.

On August 1, Government wrote to Cablevision saying it planned to make the company a scheduled carrier, like Bermuda Telephone Company, meaning the Telecommunications Commission will be able to regulate pricing and technology.

The minister said this would mean Cablevision would need permission for controversial moves such as bringing in box top decoders, for which they charged customers.

She said her department only found out about the decoders at the same time as the public, after the equipment had already arrived.

Ms Webb told The Royal Gazette yesterday that the Attorney General's Chambers also wants to give teeth to the Cablevision regulations.

Currently, it is an offence for Cablevision to broadcast services if it does not have a copyright agreement, but the regulations are pointless because there is no penalty for the offence.

Ms Webb said: ''We told Cablevision on August 1 that we are intending to make them a scheduled carrier because it is very difficult to have a monopolistic situation without control, and they have two weeks to respond.

''The benefit for consumers will be that their interests will be looked out for and there will be a vehicle (the Telecommunications Commission) to represent the concerns of the consumers.''

When asked if this could lead to a reduction in pricing, she said: ''I don't know if the prices are prohibitive, but there would be a regulatory authority looking at the issue of prices.

''The Attorney General's Chambers is also looking at giving the Cablevision regulations more teeth. At the moment, there is no penalty for copyright violation (in Bermuda) for Cablevision.

''We want to put something on the table when the House of Assembly resumes. The lawyers are saying the regulations don't have enough strength, but if we make them a scheduled carrier, there is some input.

''If they are giving something to the public and charging them and they don't have the copyright, not only is there a penalty, but they can't operate.

''With this change in regulations, we could close down the channels for which they don't have a copyright agreement.

''We realised when Cablevision was set up there was pirating going on. In our recent meeting with Cablevision, we raised with them their copyright infringement and asked what they were doing and they told us they were making every effort to regulate themselves and trying to get agreement with the US companies.

''We as a Government are researching what can be done.

''Under the Cablevision Regulations, they are not allowed to infringe copyright and formerly what happened was the former government encouraged the US companies to challenge Cablevision in the Bermuda courts, according to files in my department.''

Cablevision managing director Jeremy Elmas said yesterday he didn't know if his company had copyright agreements with all its US suppliers.

He told The Royal Gazette: ''I don't know the particulars. I'm not a lawyer and I don't want to speculate. Because we are in a lawsuit, I've been advised that the best spot for that to be resolved is in the courtroom.''

When asked about Government's plans to make Cablevision a scheduled carrier, he said: ''I received that letter on the first of August and forwarded that to our lawyer because I don't know the particulars of the legislation and don't know what the response would be.''

And he said of the lawsuit filed in the US by movie giants: ''It's an old dispute. The original lawsuit was in Bermuda in 1990 and has yet to be resolved.''