The Georgian National Communications Commission does not admit the “protest” spread today by the Levan Mikeladze Foundation and the Georgian Young Lawyers Association concerning the act of recognizing the information submitted by cable operators to the Commission as commercial secrecy.

According to the Commission any legal act issued by the Commission should be considered as one whole document and interpretation of a separate paragraph of the act without any connection to other parts of it misleads the society.  In the motivational part of the “protested” Decision adopted by the Commission it is defined clearly that agreements on retransmission authorization submitted to the Commission by authorized undertakings (cable operators) only partially include the information of commercial secrecy. Moreover, in Decisions it is defined concretely that commercial secrecy is the part of agreement which concerns the sums paid by companies, the financial obligations as well as the terms of broadcast channel transit. Recognizing such information as commercial secrecy does not restrict the rights of other operators on the market, nor from the point of view of legality of retransmission. Firstly, no agreement concerning the granting of exclusive rights was recognized as commercial secrecy and secondly, parts of agreements concerning the date of concluding agreement and names of contractors are defined openly in the Decisions of the Commission. As you know, the Decisions issued by the Georgian National Communications Commission are public and are placed on the Commission’s web-site (www.gncc.ge).

Additionally we explain that term of validity of agreement is not a commercial secret and pursuant to the general content of the Commission’s Decision can’t be considered as information belonging to the commercial secrecy.

Consequently, we find the position of non-government organizations on the Commission’s Decision of June 29, 2011 unsubstantiated and the protest groundless.