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Monique Semp wrote:
[...]
> I think as a group (all us tech writers), we've really been cowed by
> client
> demands and statements that everything in the world is proprietary and
> confidential. But assuming that contract language actually addresses
> these
> issues, that permission is obtained for posting specific info, that we
> as
> writers act responsibly and really do take care to not share things
> that
> clearly are IP, and that a click-through NDA (that's been vetted by
> one's
> own legal counsel) is used, we really are more than adequately covered.
That last point has always struck me as funny.... funny suspicious,
not funny ha-ha.
Perhaps it's because most judges are lawyers that they've
all colluded, and a standard document for a standard situation
becomes somehow invalid if it's not been regurgitated by a
new lawyer each time it's used by a new client.
Seriously, how many legally-different - in non-overlapping fashion -
Non Disclosure Agreements ARE there? Do lawyers have to visit
a secret lawyerly database somewhere in order to find some previously
unused terms or combination of lawyer-English words to make your
NDA different from all other NDAs... to justify charging you for
writing/vetting the NDA that you (as the eighty-thousandth person
doing the same damn thing on-line) want to put in front of the
same basic kind of info that 79,999 other sites have already done?
Yes, yes, I know. Somebody _will_ reply that "...if you want to
take the legal risk that the NDA document you've cadged from
eleventy-two other sites isn't 102% bullet-proof, by employing
a fresh lawyer to re-bless it for the 79,998th time..." pffft!
It's a scam.
I await the flood of links to stories of website owners losing
legal contests because they used an NDA (or privacy policy, or
other standard doc) that other people have been using for years,
and didn't have it freshly approved by "their own lawyer".
-k (a wee tad cynical this morning)
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