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AMD NDA Scandal
crazyeyes writes "Just two weeks ago, a Thai journalist walked out of the hush-hush AMD event in Singapore over a controversial NDA that required him to 'send any stories to the vendor before his newspaper can publish it.' AMD categorically denied it happened, but today, we not only have proof that it happened, we also have the sordid details of the entire affair. Here's a quote from the editorial: 'First off, the non-disclosure agreement covered everything confidential said or written over the next two years on the product, and had a duration of five years, during which anything published or used in marketing would have to receive written approval from AMD before it could be used. Worse, at the end of the five years, all copies of the information made would have to be returned to the chipmaker.'"
AMD, make better, cooler chips and open your specs or write open source drivers.
But he didn't sign it - "a Thai journalist walked out ... over a controversial NDA"
The story is interesting because AMD is stupid enough to think it should be able to get away with this bullshit.
This is Slashdot. "[Big tech corp] acts like an asshole" is standard fare here.
All I got from the article was that someone is impatient about getting some benchmarks and that a Thai Journalist MIGHT have walked out because of a NDA which may or may not exist... exciting...
Sometimes bad policy like this is made by ignorant management and not with the intention to screen bad press. Not saying that that is the case here, but the person(s) involved in writing the NDA could very well have been working under the requirement to safeguard information about new amd products until the products are released. Sometimes the paranoid "they're controlling the press" mentality is solely the product of tin foil hats. :)
As a journalist, we're always being asked to sign BS NDAs. Most of us refuse to sign ones far milder than this idiotic one. After all, in the end we always find our what the big secret is anyway. If you're not good at being snoopy, what are you doing as a reporter anyway?
The Real scandal is described here:
All of those invited to the event were given an NDA to sign before going on that 5-star, all-expense-paid trip to Singapore. Hidden in that piece of legal boilerplate were some sneaky clauses. Yeah, don't we just love those clauses. This is what Don found in that NDA:
Excuse me? If I went on any "5-star, all-expense paid trip to Singapore" at a vendor's expense I'm going to be--and I would deserve to be--fired in less time than it took me to write this note.
Steven
Let's get this straight: AMD is a company working for profit. They are at least afforded the right to decide what kind of information about unreleased products will be made available to the market. If information (or, heaven forbid, disinformation by the media!) is released that was not part of AMD's market strategy, product strategy, or competitive strategy, it could severely damage their business.
For example, if AMD was targeting 32 TB/s of memory bandwith at 2ms latencies for their year 2 target, that would be quite a sensitive strategy. Make Intel, or any number of small semiconductor companies, aware of this, and there is a strong possibility that instead of joining AMD, they'll fight, and damage AMD's market position.
If a company wants a reporter to sign an NDA, the reporter can sign it, or the reporter can refuse to - it's not like AMD goombas twisted their arm to sign it. Bravo on not being a corporate pawn, but that's where it stops.
WTF, your rights by the Constitution are restrictions on government, not on private entities. You can sign all your rights away except your life or liberty (slavery for instance).
It is very very common for secrets to be shared with an NDA. And no just because you are a journalist doesn't give you the "right" to share these secrets when you signed an NDA. This journalist decided not to sign, AMD decided not to share its secrets. End of story.
How is this even acting like an ass? AMD is under no obligation to allow journalists on the factory floor to begin with. If they have things in there that they don't want others (read: Intel) to know about, an NDA is a practical necessity. Since the only possible benefit to them for doing something like this is in marketing value, so they made the NDA do a little extra work. Who gives a shit.
From the article, which some comment posters above did not bother to read:
"Finally, AMD agreed to let Don and the other journalists attend the event [in Singapore] without signing that particular NDA... On Day 2 though, they were presented with another NDA to sign before a factory visit. [my emphasis] This one stipulated that "any confidential information from this visit would need written approval from corporate communications before it could be used."
It seems quite common that executives of technical companies have no understanding of their company's products, and because of that they sometimes have sink-the-company ideas. It won't matter to the executive if his company does poorly, he will just get a job somewhere else. When the company lays off employees they will suffer, however.
People with no technical knowledge, and little or no interest in learning about their company's products, should be encouraged to get a job somewhere else, or retire. They are dinosaurs from a pre-tech world.
If you are technically knowledgeable, why let someone stupid ruin your efforts? If you get together with other technically knowledgeable people and use some social skill, you can eliminate ignorant executives from your company.
Yeah, I agree with you. Sure, the NDA requiring someone to have his story double checked is stupid and the reporter was right to refuse to sign it. Sure, AMD is truly dumb for trying to deny it. They should have just come forward. What I don't understand is why the censorship tag? AFAIK, companies are free to keep secrets and share them with anyone agreeing to their term. Calling this a censorship cheapen the word much like the words peace, terrorists, racism and so on have been cheapened.
The big deal in this IMHO is the fact that AMD denied it, not the NDA itself. And as far as the denial goes, this hardly worth mentioning as a news.
The journalist in question did not sign the aforementioned NDA. He was expressing his disappointment in the other journalists who did sign the agreement, either out of ignorance or apathy. He's also broadcasting the fact that the so called "independent media" of blogs and citizen journalists may not be as independent as it seems, thanks to agreements like this.
We all know what to do, but we don't know how to get re-elected once we have done it
The journalist did and frankly, so do I. Sure, AMD can refuse to show the journalist anything at all but that is still better than reading an article from a seemingly independent journalist who was effectively made a puppet of AMD through an overreaching NDA. An NDA can be okay but this one is excessive since it compromises the journalist's independence.
You forgot to make fun of him for trying to use bbcode on Slashdot.
I'm sorry, but if I was an executive of a large vendor in the highly competitive tech sector and I allowed reporters to tour my manufacturing plant without signing an NDA... THAT would be a sink-the-company idea.
You don't give out tours of the factory to give journos the scoop on everything you're working on for the next ten years. You do it to create goodwill, spin some big yarns full of impressive figures, give the writers something to yak about at the subsequent briefing/luncheon, etc.
If you go on a factory tour expecting to find tanks full of cloned aliens in the basement, you're not just a bad reporter, you're an idiot.
Breakfast served all day!
I'm going to reply to you and to the ones below you who don't think this is a freedom of speech issue because the federal government isn't doing it.
Just like a person can be sued for wrongful imprisonment, another person can be sued for slander, individuals can sue private entities who infringe on their rights. They may (or may not) be able to make a federal case out of it, but that doesn't mean there aren't protections against these things. Governments (ideally) do two things: protect me from you, and protect me from themselves.
Now, lets get on with this journalist's problem. His problem wasn't with the NDA in itself. The problem that any work that he produced that mentioned the Barcelona product line had to be approved by AMD itself, and at the end of five years, all of his own work that was related to Barcelona had to be returned to AMD. If you don't see how that's objectionable, you deserve to be deceived. That little part gives AMD the right to edit and refuse any report on the Barcelona line. Barcelona chips are just two Athlon XPs duct-taped together? Guess what. If you signed that NDA, AMD has the right to control that information. Barcelona chips are hot enough to roast a full pig? Sorry, you signed the NDA and we have the right to review your work for inaccuracies. So this is an issue of freedom of the press. Not freedom from the tyranny of the government, but freedom from the tyranny of those who would bind us by legal contracts, ignoring social contract that they diminish by continuing to think that their corporate identities supersede the rights guaranteed to all humans by virtue of being born.
AMD needs to let the journalists print what they print and let their chips stand on their own merits. Anything less than that and you have to consider that what AMD spews out aren't facts about their product, but carefully crafted advertisements.
http://cincyboys.blogspot.com/ Everything Cincinnati. Including the word 'Finnih'
While the article goes on to imply that that statement is the equivalent of agreeing to let AMD rape the reporter's baby, I just don't see it. They are bringing these guys into a private building where trade secrets are in use and don't want it all published in some article or blog.
I fail to see the egregiousness here. What's more I don't see how anyone with even half a brain would see anything wrong here. Please explain what exactly AMD is trying to "get away" with?
The bill of rights is limits on what the government can do unilaterally through force of law. Those are your constitutional rights, and you may suspend them as you see fit, especially if it gets you some benefit. (For example, if you've ever gotten a DMV ticket, you probably waived your right to a trial by jury to get it over with faster.)
An NDA is a perfectly acceptable contract -- you agree not to tell, and I agree to tell you something I wouldn't otherwise. You could even argue that the NDA is part of your first amendment right of freedom to associate. This is NOT legal, and they cannot enforce this in a court of law. Yes, they can. Go to your local community college and take a basic business law class. You're woefully underinformed as to what the law will and won't do, who the Constitution applies to, and apparently even the basic understanding of what the Bill of Rights says.
("Congress shall make no law..." can be stretched to apply to the various legislatures of the states fairly well. Hoewver, we do NOT want any legal precdent at all eqauting "business" with "congress" in any way. I don't want Microsoft to have even the slightest chance of being able to declare war.)
AMD is protecting their confidential information... if a journalist has AMD Confidential and Proprietary information, then anything they write about AMD's new, mostly-secret products needs review by AMD to make sure that the vendor didn't spill anything confidential about upcoming products. .... this is a 'scandal'? It's necessary and proper legal protection for their information. This is about as 'scandalous' as the US government clearing folks, letting them access cleared data, and then expecting them to pass any information they release about secret projects through a censor to get checked for the particular secret portions of those projects (TEMPEST shielding ... we use it... but you can't tell them how to make it, cut that part out and you're good to send).
This is either sensationalist or stupid. Looks like it comes from the "information wants to be free" hacker crowd.
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???? He seems to be the only one who got an interesting story at all. Everyone else just printed a bunch of press releases from AMD. Of the hundred (totally guessing) reporters at this event, he's the only one who will stand out in an editor's mind when it comes time to hire someone.
Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.
Reporters sign NDAs all the time, especially in the technology business. That's how they get sneak previews of technology not-yet-released, so that (for example) when it is released the articles will be already written and ready for press.
Maybe the terms of this particular NDA were more restrictive than normal, maybe not. Usually there's a date on which the NDA expires and the info can be released without review (because the company is issuing a press release on that day anyway). But that's typically for upcoming product releases, not visits to R&D labs or the like.
If they don't want a trade secret or confidential material to be reported, don't show it to a bunch of reporters.
Well, they didn't show it to anyone who didn't want to sign the NDA, so what's the big deal? It's up to each individual reporter to decide whether getting that kind of deep background info is worth the restrictions. At least AMD made the offer, giving the choice to the reporters.
-- Alastair
EXACTLY.
The important point here is how AMD has poisoned the well with this action.
Just how much (larger) a gain of salt will I have to take anything I read about their new stuff? I know much of tech media are barely more than shills for those they write about, but this (the initial NDA he refused to sign) goes quite a bit beyond anything I can remember hearing for the media.
No K10 chips for me this year or next, I would say....
If the NDA is insane, don't sign it. This sounds like AMD want to filter all reviews. Certainly some will wait and just review it with no strings.
Sounds like we get the AMD official reviews monday, and the real reviews after you can buy it.
The journalist did and frankly, so do I. Sure, AMD can refuse to show the journalist anything at all but that is still better than reading an article from a seemingly independent journalist who was effectively made a puppet of AMD through an overreaching NDA. An NDA can be okay but this one is excessive since it compromises the journalist's independence.
What? What on earth keeps that "journalist" from starting the article with the words "I signed an NDA, so take what I write with a grain of salt" or whatever?
And NDAs simply say that you can't reveal company secrets. Heck, I had to sign NDAs for job interviews, because I had to know deep IP to even evaluate whether I wanted to work somewhere. Methinks this is an extremely green boy directly out of journalism school who's simply never been inside a tech company. You think Intel (or Maxim or Samsung or whatever chipmaker) will just let you publish stories with details of their secret processes?
If I was AMD, I'd say "sure, you journalists can have a look around, but I'd like to see what you print beforehand simply to make sure you don't inadvertently publish something that is actually not supposed to be public knowledge". That clueless "Thai journalist" wouldn't know tech processes, so he wouldn't know what part of what he's seeing is common knowledge and what part is the secret economic engine behind AMDs success.
So where's the "scandal" here? What part of "large company doesn't want its trade secrets publicly revealed" is somehow immoral or illegal or unethical or whatever? The alternative is for AMD to close its doors entirely, and then folks would be howling about "evil secrecy".
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If you die in debt, you're ahead.
Yes, that's the point -- it's one thing to say "hey', we're going to show you some stuff so that you can do your own research and thinking and be ready to publish whatever you like on July 9th when we release the information to the public".
It's quite another to say "We're going to give you a tour, and by taking the tour you agree to let us review and edit every article you write for the next 5 years that might in some way contain information we could possibly construe as confidential".
The first is essentially a professional courtesy that is advantageous to both sides as well as customers. The latter is just a ridiculous overreach that any journalist (which of course excludes most trade rag writers) would laugh at and reject out of hand.
Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.
Personally I have gone to these events and have signed manufactures agreements like this before. Why? Because I will probably only write about them once when said products in the events are finally released to the general public. By the time said products are 6 months old they are old news and not worth writing about anymore.
This "fellow" reporter, probably new to the industry is trying to make himself look defiant so publications might take him serious.