by Andrea King

There are no impediments to prevent the live pay-per-view coverage of three major Crop Over events.

That was the assurance of Minister of State in the Prime Minister's Office Rev. Joseph Atherley yesterday after he emerged from a meeting with the Caribbean Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), the National Cultural Foundation (NCF) and other stakeholders, to resolve the issue of the broadcast of the Pic-O-De-Crop and Party Monarch contests.

Atherley said the issue was whether or not CBC would have the facility to cover the Party Monarch and Pic-O-De-Crop contests as has been the custom, and it was with a small group of people who did not belong to the Copyright Society of Composers Authors and Publishers (COSCAP).

"We do have a little bit of an issue with some persons who are not members of COSCAP, persons who are not necessarily performers
but persons who are necessarily incidental to the performers. Their rights have to be respected as well and we will have some discussion with them later today," he said, adding CBC wanted to broadcast the contests.

"Those persons who fall outside of the ambit of COSCAP and who want the opportunity to negotiate for themselves
in terms of fees are being given the opportunity to do so. It is within that frame that the discussions later on would take place and hopefully that would resolve the matter."

Atherley also said Barbados was still trying to grapple with the still relatively new issue of intellectual property.

"Once you are in a situation where you have competing interests, especially in a context of limited capacity and opportunity, there will be conflict. A test of maturity is how you manage that conflict and I think Bajans have shown over and over again that in big issues and small issues we have the capacity to properly resolve any conflict which legitimately arises."

The (CBC) announced on Monday there would be no live coverage on pay-per-view this year since some artistes wanted separate contracts to allow the broadcast.