Interesting Links for 22-04-2025

[andrewducker]

1. Quora make it easy to distribute malware. Avoid, or at least don't click on links.

(tags:quora malware OhForFucksSake )

2. Neil Gaiman Seeks $500,000 Over Caroline Wallner Allegations (for breaking an NDA)

(tags:neilgaiman assault lawsuit )

Comments

[calimac]

2) Are NDAs ever a good thing?
Yeah, maybe spilling corporate secrets to a new employer, though even that can be applied unfairly. But besides that.

[andrewducker]

Besides that, I don't think so.

And, frankly, I think that even in the case of corporate secrets, it ought to be incredibly limited. People should have the right to take the things they've learned and apply them in future jobs.

[calimac]

"the things they've learned" is not the same as "corporate secrets." It is possible for ex-employees to abuse their ex-employer in this way. But applying that stricture unfairly is at least equally common.

[andrewducker]

What kind of corporate secrets are you thinking of?

[poshmerchant]

Client lists, release dates

[andrewducker]

Those seem reasonable. In a time-limited manner.

[azurelunatic]

Time sensitive leaking of soon to be fixed security vulnerabilities
Proprietary computer chip architecture
The eleven secret herbs and spices / Coca Cola / the location of the official baseball red mud

[andrewducker]

The first one I'm happy to be under time-limited NDA.

The other two definitely not. "You've learned how to make X on the job and are now forbidden to use that knowledge" is something I am 100% against.

[bens_dad]

Fitzbillies Bakery/Cafe in Cambridge was famous for its Chelsea Buns.
After a serious fire it ceased trading. Eventually new occupiers started a bakery/cafe on the site. They wanted the recipe for the Chelsea Buns, so they found an old employee and got the recipe from her.
I suspect that could be called a corporate secret.

The owners of the new business even included a version of the recipe in a recipe book that they published. IIRC they say it isn't exactly the recipe they use, since the commercial version wouldn't work for domestic quantities.

I don't know whether there was an NDA involved but I never heard that the original owners had a problem.

[andrewducker]

That's *exactly* the kind of secret I'm against.

"We taught you how to make a cake, and now you must never use that knowledge." seems incredibly wrong to me.

[movingfinger]

Hah, people in and around Boston (Mass.) still get feisty over the famous Jordan Marsh (department store) bakery's blueberry muffin recipe, which was never officially published because Sekrit and therefore circulates as several different recipes, none of which are the same.

[mountainkiss]

Andy this reads as though you don’t think IP should exist and surely I must be misunderstanding. If a business’s competitive advantage rests wlog on a recipe then surely they have the right to preserve its secrecy? I completely get that it’s different when the original business no longer exists as above, but the comment reads (to me) as wider than that.

[andrewducker]

Why would something be allowed to exist *because* it has a competitive advantage?

I don't see the casual link there

And I believe in very limited IP.

[mountainkiss]

I think that if small businesses can’t protect eg recipes then large organisations who can eg outsource manufacturing or realise scale benefits will (pun not intended) eat them up.

[andrewducker]

Large organisations can generally reverse engineer recipes. Particularly nowadays.

I don't think that "We can't work out how to make this particular food" is a real thing. And I'm not aware of any modern cases of small bakers valiantly holding off the megacorps with their unreplicable recipes. Not when with a reasonable research budget you can do this kind of thing: https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/jf504953s

And if it was then I'd be on the side of the additional millions of people who got to eat the nicer food over the 4 bakers who got to keep it from them.

[mountainkiss]

I’m also not sure if this is 100% true but I think that if people don’t think they own the rights to what they invent, they stop inventing things.

[andrewducker]

Which is why I'm in favour of limited IP protection. The length of time you get for a patent seems reasonable to me.

[mountainkiss]

This is interesting. I thought this argument would have low currency with you and the other one higher, but I got it the wrong way round.

[bens_dad]

I left an employer after a significant spell of ill health.
I had been offered a deal and my professional advisers (including someone from my union head office)
advised me to take it, even though it contained an NDA. I asked about whether NDAs are a bad thing in principle. The answer appeared to suggest that it without NDAs there might not be similar deals. I wasn't convinced but didn't have a lot of energy to argue.

The NDA specifically says that I cannot mention a particular sum of money, which I can well understand from the employer's point of view.

[greenwoodside]

2. The main point of NDAs appears to lie the revelation of their existence hanging a large 'this person is an arsehole, avoid avoid avoid' sign over the head of whoever the initiator was. The latter may as well carry around a loudspeaker and announce "yes, I treat people like shit and then try and cover it up with money and lawyers."

[channelpenguin]

Awesome! Yes!

[mountainkiss]

I have to sign an NDA every time I onboard with a new client, because my coachees are C-suite leaders and they need to be able to talk about data that is commercial in confidence in the knowledge that I can be held to account if I reveal it. Do you think this should be prohibited?

[andrewducker]

That *does* seem like a reasonable reason for an NDA. It's not your employers saying you can't take learned skills with you, and it's not covering up anything.

I'd expect it to be time bound, because very few commercial plans are still useful after more than a few years. But I'd also expect it to be in your interests to keep quiet because otherwise nobody would employ you.

[mountainkiss]

Yes but if I knew something that I thought I could deploy to the tune of making tens of millions (this has happened) then that argument might hold less water.

[andrewducker]

I am now very interested to know things you couldn't possibly tell me :⁠-⁠)

[mountainkiss]

I am a sealed vault.

[andrewducker]

I have faith in you.

[anef]

Thanks for the Quora warning - I have unsubscribed.

[andrewducker]

It's such a shame!