New NVIDIA Press Embargo Stirs Things Up

Roughly a week media should have received a new long-term NDA from NVIDIA. This NDA is an agreement between NVIDIA and the media outlet. The new embargo is, however, stirring up a few things for some websites. 

In particular website Heise is not rather happy about the new embargo. In fact, Heise feels the new non-disclosure agreement is so wrong that felt the need to publish the non-disclosure agreement as an article online on their website. According to Heise, the document is in violation of journalistic principles. They (much like us) received the document on June 20, with the request to sign it within two days. The document itself is designed in such a manner that it's benefitting NVIDIA, e.g. favoring Nvidia. The agreement is long-term, and states that confidential information must be kept secret for five years, but if it concerns a 'professional trade secret', that confidentiality will never pass. This, in theory, could mean that journalists never could reveal a specific leaked detail from another source. Heise made it clear that they will not sign the NDA and considered it their journalistic duty by "creating transparency" with publishing the document in its entirety.

That said, allow me to give you my take (the Guru3D side) of this topic slash story. Press embargoes have been here for years and from anyone. From AIB partners we work with, to (at the time) Intel, to Nvidia towards AMD. If a new Intel Chipset motherboard is released? We receive such NDA from MSI, ASUS, Gigabyte and onwards. So basically, the minute you get your hands on samples that are not released yet, you'll need to have signed a non-disclosure agreement. While I do not feel a need to defend NVIDIA whatsoever, the new long-term NDA from NVIDIA is not very different from older ones ergo, I was not at all that surprised by its contents. Interesting, however, is the line: "Shall not: post news stories based on confidential information". But here again, that's not very different from what we have seen in the past and certainly not very different from NDAs we receive from other parties in the technology industry.

Why the new NDA is stirring and heating things up so much for certain media, I can only speculate about. I truly think the GPP discussion ignited some things, a certain disgruntled feel about NVIDIA, trying to force certain practices. In all my years of posted news and articles, we've never had to fight with NVIDIA over any content we posted, and we do post it all. That doesn't mean however these contracts should be taken lightly. As time passes and with everything that is going on in the world in matters of privacy, objectivity and the tech industry as a whole, perhaps it's time for NVIDIA to look into remodeling such embargoes to gain trust. We signed the NDA, we can opt-out anytime. Will be doing anything different compared to the past? No Sir. Do we expect heat on our content from NVIDIA? No Sir, not at all. And if they do, NVIDIA will shoot themselves in the foot as the press as an entirety is something they cannot control. Hey, and if we disagree about a request that NVIDIA would make, we can opt-out of any embargo anytime.

While its good to address these topics open and transparent I just feel that the reality is also that the new embargo really isn't that different from the older ones, which Heise certainly signed time after time at any event and product release. It's not cool to have to sign NDAs, but unfortunately, it comes with the territory of testing, reviewing and writing news about products that have not been released. I would love to live without them, but also understand why they exist. Each media outlet will have a different opinion about that, of course. Which we totally respect.

Below you can read the new long-term NDA.