When did Non Disclosure Agreements (NDAs) cease to have any meaning? And what does this mean for the future of Apple reporting and blogging going forward?
[ad#Google Adsense 300×250 in story]With the recent rollout of a developer release of Mac OS X Lion, we’ve seen a flurry of first looks and sneak previews posted to Apple-related blogs far and wide. None of which I’ll link to here, for obvious reasons.
What’s important for the casual observer to understand is that, for the most part, these are being done in violation of the NDA that Apple requires registered Apple developers to sign.
There are certainly ways around the NDA. For example, getting screenshots or anonymous information sent from registered developers, while not being a developer directly.
Make no mistake, Apple lowered the bar dramatically when they dropped the price of being a registered Apple developer from hundreds of dollars to a mere $99. That gave many otherwise cash-strapped bloggers and minor journalists all the motivation they needed to sign up, grab Lion and start posting screenshots.
That lower price and the process of registering is still a high enough barrier to entry to keep mainstream users away from Lion. But I’m still willing to bet that once Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC) rolls around, the company will trumpet about how many new “developers” have been added to the fold since last year.
Will Apple yank developer credentials as a result of this? I seriously doubt it. While they may occasionally slap the wrists of developers who talk and blog out of turn, let’s face it – it’s publicity for Apple, building public awareness of what is, by all early accounts, going to be a very significant update to Mac OS X. And with millions and millions of new Mac users joining the fold every quarter, that benefits Apple in the long run.
Most of the blogs doing this have little, if anything, to lose. They exist at the periphery of the Apple news ecosystem, with very little access to Apple beyond what the general public does – Apple press releases offered through official channels and scraps they can glean from trusted news sources.
So there’s motivation for these blogs and second-rate news sources to violate NDAs. It’s a short-term gain that adds readership and applies eyes to page views, with a remote chance of suffering any negative consequences.
But it’s also really dirty pool, and as far as I’m concerned, it’s a lousy way of doing business.
We hear a lot from bloggers whining that they’re not taken seriously as journalists. My recommendation: If you want to be taken seriously as a journalist, then take your head out of your ass and start acting the part.
I’m not advocating breaching contracts, in fact, I spend much of my time working to enforce them.
It seems to me one thing that would restore integrity to non-disclosure agreements is for the companies that use to enforce them. If companies continually watch their NDAs be violated and take no action, there is some question in my mind whether the *company* believes the NDA has any value. If the company doesn’t value the NDA, why should a signor (journalist) who has compete with a sea of people violating the NDA?
These crybaby bloggers not only lack journalistic integrity, but integrity of any sort. Attention whores.
I know of a better way to shut down these content-farm gossip purveyors. Stop visiting them, even for laughs.
Very glad Peter didn’t provide links.
While we’re on the subject of journalistic integrity, I’d add that if one wishes to be taken seriously as a source for informed, objective product reviews, one shouldn’t turn around and drive traffic to one’s site by spewing out promo codes for the products one reviews like fireworks on the Fourth of July. Again, not naming names, just making a much needed point.
Well done on a timely and necessary post, Peter.
Point me to some actual violations of NDAs. Haven’t seen anything re Lion that is not already publicly available on Apple’s website.
If the cops never arrest me, I’ll just keep robbing banks! Pirating movies! Blah blah.
I actually understand your point – that we’d actually respect NDAs if we feared reprisal – but for that to be the only conclusion must require a certain cynical outlook on the ethical fortitude of everyone involved.
Me, too, they’re not worth your time and their advertisers’s money.
The good thing is; there are more than enough good publications on the internet that will give you the same amount of content at a higher value.
We don’t need the likes of 9to5 Mac, Cult of Mac, Apple Insider, Gizmodo, etc.
It is interesting what makes people scream… they scream IF then NDA is enforced and then AGAIN when its not.
I beta-test (Apple calls it seeding) Mac OS X Server, have since its first release and we get more updates/versions to test than the developers do. I can tell this because when a new release comes for seeders there will likely be one or two posts about it somewhere on the web. A small feature or two that has popped up in the latest build. When a new dev preview comes out the web goes nuts about it because it ends up in more hands of “developers”. Screen shots, the whole nine yards.
A signed NDA is just that! Shut your yapper and wait for final release.
I will say that I have seen things talked about with Lion that do not appear on Apple’s web site…it is not public knowledge and should not be shared. At the same time, if you do not have the preview/seed copy of Lion and do not know the details, it probably looks like what is posted on Apple’s site and seems like no big deal. That is not the point.
Good article and one that I wished had been posted with each and every release of Mac OS X.
Not enforcing NDAs creates a legal precedent. Courts tend to watch how things are conducted over time, and when they notice something like this, where NDAs are not enforced when a vendor notices that NDA broken, they don’t tend to be sympathetic later if said vendor then seems to selectively go after some people and not others.
Something I learned, being married to a person who worked in a prosecuting attorney’s office.
I didn’t write this story. Point yourself at someone else.
You mean C…nt of Mac lol
Keep looking. They are there.
I wholeheartedly agree. I am an Apple Retail employee. I signed an NDA for Apple twice. Once at the start of my employment and once the other day. And I will tell you that the reason for the NDA this past week is already plastered (somewhat accurately, I might add) all over the internet, and it’s not even announced by Apple yet. There hasn’t even been the slightest hint or suggestion from Apple. Someone’s got some ‘splainin’ to do.
There’s a catch here that no one has mentioned. Apple likely doesn’t know who might have leaked info. Just like which jerk employee walked out of their store meeting and leaked that whole Joint Venture thing .
So not enforcing is more about not knowing. Now if you can prove that they do know, without a shadow of a doubt and aren’t doing anything. Well that’s a whole different sport
Not sure you have the point grasped firmly Peter.
An NDA applies to the one who signed it. Not a blogger who is made aware of it. In fact, isn’t it the duty of an investigative journalist to reveal the stuff that’s being hidden from the interested audience? Otherwise, wouldn’t you be just another component of a corporation’s PR department?
If you want to point the finger, then it’s surely the dev who broke the NDA who’s the guilty party here. I don’t see where the blogger, doing what bloggers (such as yourself) do can warrant slurs against their “journalistic integrity”.
Sometimes it’s better to ease off on the kool-aid Peter. Especially when you’re attempting to take the moral high ground. Hubris and hypocrisy do not lend credibility to morality.
Yes, you’re right, that was a typo on my side 😉
The point Peter’s making (if I read the article correctly, and my native language is not English) is the ‘blogger’ who signs up for a developper account, downloads the software and starts posting screen shots all over the interenet.
“The point Peter’s making (if I read the article correctly, and my native language is not English) is the ‘blogger’ who signs up for a developper[sic] account, downloads the software and starts posting screen shots all over the interenet.”
Then I suggest you re-read what Peter has written. For example…
“There are certainly ways around the NDA. For example, getting screenshots or anonymous information sent from registered developers, while not being a developer directly.”
The example quoted above clearly allows that the blogger may well not be a developer. And also that the developer clearly may not be a blogger.
Peter is absolutely entitled to call out a dev who has broken his NDA. But he’s being absolutely hypocritical if he’s suggesting that a blogger, given some juicy info about some new release or other, should refuse to publish it on moral grounds that he or she has decided are important because of a relationship with the company whose secrets have been outed.
One other point of possible contention is whether of not a person is bound more strongly by his or her loyalty to a particular entity, or to his or her loyalty to honesty.
But that’s not my call. Maybe it’s Peter’s.