5 ms·
The NDA terms are sometimes onerous. For example, prohibiting you from talking about unreleased products regardless of how you come to know about them, not just
by eli 8y ago
The NDA terms are sometimes onerous. For example, prohibiting you from talking about unreleased products regardless of how you come to know about them, not just from what you see on the tour. Every decent journalist would respect that parts of a tour would be off-the-record without the need for a legally binding document.
I've declined the opportunity to receive pre-release review devices before because I didn't like the restrictions the NDA put on what I was allowed to say about them.
- JumpCrisscross 8y ago> every decent journalist would respect that parts of a tour would be off-the-record without the need for a legally binding document Then they shouldn't have a problem agreeing to that in writing.
- romwell 8y ago>Then they shouldn't have a problem agreeing to that in writing. Um, you seem to have missed this part: >The NDA terms are sometimes onerous. For example, prohibiting you from talking about unreleased products regardless of how you come to know about them, not just from what you see on the tour. See, there's more stuff in the NDA than what common sense dictates. You can't just agree to the parts you don't have problem with.
- tedunangst 8y agoNot my area of expertise, but isn't that unenforceable?
- romwell 8y agoNot mine either, but why not? "We have shown X during the tour. Joe and Mary certify that. The article mentions X. This is a violation of the NDA." Even if X was common knowledge, once you sign the agreement, you're setting yourself up for trouble if you do something you agreed not to.
- tedunangst 8y agoWell, that's kinda my point. If it's common knowledge, are you in trouble?
- curun1r 8y agoIt's still reasonable to prevent the journalistic equivalent of parallel construction. Publishing is only half the equation...the other half is knowing what to go looking for. You can't expect companies to only protect themselves from one of those.
- ensignavenger 8y agoSure you can, it is called negotiating, and if you can't come to a win-win agreement, there is no deal. Simple.
- debatem1 8y agoIt's actually quite common to redline NDAs. At one previous employer nearly every company we entered discussions with asked us to cut two clauses in our NDA. We usually cut one and stood our ground on the other and I can only think of one case in several years where the compromise was unacceptable.
- paulie_a 8y agoWhy bother?
- msla 8y ago> Every decent journalist would respect that parts of a tour would be off-the-record without the need for a legally binding document. Granted. Still, you don't know who's decent until it's too late. Even decent news organizations can hire utterly odious people, as in the Glass incident. Admittedly, that was more about making information up entirely, but the premise is valid: Even the best-respected news organizations could, potentially, ship you someone just untrustworthy enough that, without the immediate threat of an NDA, they'd leak. Because that's where laws live: Most people would be largely decent without laws. Some few aren't decent even with very immediate penalties hanging over their heads. (This is a disorder in the DSM, in fact.) Others, some unknown fraction, are only decent because of law; that is, they lack much internalized morality, but they understand consequences well enough that laws keep them from doing bad things.