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Editorial Revised NVIDIA Reviewers NDA Raises Eyebrows: Our Thoughts

rtwjunkie

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I think we should equate tech news to sweet news. It would bring things into perspective.

Today Mars released a new chocolate bar, it's awesome. The NDA we signed meant we couldn't tell you about its super dooper sweetness earlier. But now we can, and yum, that brown shit is the dogs bollocks. Another sweety review site, called, HardOCP (Hard On Chocolate Prohibition), sold the secret recipe Mars were working on and got no new chocolate to review. Boo Fucking Hoo. Now HardOCP are hoping the other brand of chocolate, Nestle, will send them all their great stuff instead. Except we all know, nestle sucks.

Now it all sounds like a silly game doesn't it? I don't think anyone died in this whole escapade unless perhaps they missed the nets at Foxconn.
You sir, totally nailed how important it all is in real life by using chocolate! Excellent schooling....I hope those “affected” paid attention.
 
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We and another website trade 3rd place for traffic for hardware reviews and news and such. Our sample size is much larger than you give us credit for. :p

but then, you need to look at that objectively. Maybe NVidia DOES try to manipulate smaller sites. But if they are, those sites are the ones you should be after for listening and being swayed, not NVidia.

I was curious about this and Heise.de is 3x bigger than TPU (traffic wise). Interesting stats. One statistical site says 20-30% of TPU traffic is for GPU-Z. Globaly Heise.de is ranked x6 higher than TPU.

They also own print so they have a lot more to worry about if they have to sign it as a company and not a 1man operation reviewer.

I would Imagine they can afford good legal advise given their size

My NDA is more specific, so as to protect me. That's the only difference here, and what I learned about this... if you have specific expectations, you have to specify them in a specific way (which is pretty funny to me, but OK, I was wrong to expect my customers to look at things my way, just simply because we both own businesses. The truth is that we are usually in different industries, so that means my customers would not have the same knowledge to base their interpretations on). Because of those specifics, no, I cannot share my own NDA forms.

Contractual law is pretty awesome, and still way over my head.. all I can share is what I've learnt and my experience. Like that "Reasonable Person" is actually defined by law. Any terms that are not defined by law are what get you into trouble.

On page 2

Nvidia NDA said:
"The laws of the State of Delaware, without reference to conflict of law principles shall govern this Agreement"
 

cadaveca

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I was curious about this and Heise.de is 3x bigger than TPU (traffic wise). Interesting stats. One statistical site says 20-30% of TPU traffic is for GPU-Z. Globaly Heise.de is ranked x6 higher than TPU.

They also own print so they have a lot more to worry about if they have to sign it as a company and not a 1man operation reviewer.

I would Imagine they can afford good legal advise given their size

Hmm, that's quite interesting! I am not aware of non-English sites, so was referring to that. AnandTech, Tom's are the top two, and us and guru3d swap spots regularly that I have seen. I use Alexa for checking this though, so if you used a different site that might explain things too. I just checked Alexa, and yep, they are HUGE!!! they rank about 1250 out of all sites, and usually I see us @ around 5000 (sometimes higher, sometimes lower). Heise.de is DEFINITELY bigger. But in the US, they are pretty much non-existent (naturally, so not in my scope of lookking). There's probably other non-English sites that are equally large as well, too, I suppose. I only look into this in by-passing while doing my actual job, as that's one of the metrics we use to verify we've done a proper job. :p

And yeah, W1zz and GPU-Z is the reason people come here for sure.


That said though... what I said about tort law still definitely applies.



On page 2

They specify that so you know what version of legalese you need to use, FYI. ;) Not pointing out anything I didn't see myself. :p This is why some things are done in certain states, since the legalese changes from region to region. A lawyer's job is by no means easy, since that have to navigate all that. Knowing how to do that properly is why they make the big bucks. :p You can then break that down into different sections of the law, since you know, lawyers specialize... and that's WHY they specialize...
 
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They specify that so you know what version of legalese you need to use, FYI. ;) Not pointing out anything I didn't see myself. :p This is why some things are done in certain states, since the legalese changes from region to region. A lawyer's job is by no means easy, since that have to navigate all that. Knowing how to do that properly is why they make the big bucks. :p

Yes, I know. some comments here (and elsewhere) even by some who may have signed it refer to other country laws. Gives the impression they haven't read the entire thing.
 
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heise.de: The NDA should apply to all information provided by Nvidia, so it did not refer to a specific product or information. There was also no concrete expiration date.

The other sites already said this is a normal NDA, nothing to see.
Oh, right, sure thing. There was also a lawyer that said "I don't know what it means (so it should be fine". Those stupid Germans just worry about nothing...

Well well well, looks like Kyle and that German site clickbaited
Gamernexus has exactly 0 credibility in general, let alone in controversies like this one.
"That German site" is much bigger than you think, doesn't need cheap clicks, loses much more by not getting review samples in advance.
 
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We see the same logic every time in politics, whwre a person decides they want to be offended and creates a narrative a wild stretch from that was actually written. Im still pissed that nVidia backed down from the partnership program ...

If imitation is the sincerest from of flattery, than AMD is flattering the hell out of its competitors....

X370 is not intended to mimic Z370 ?
Where did AMD come up with the 5 and 7 nomenclature for Ryzen ... remind you have anything ?
Why did AMD whine like hell when nVidia offered partners benefits if they agreed to reserve naming conventions exclusively to cards containing the shared technology benefits ?

The strategy is old and it's purpose transparent. When Johnny asks Mom for say a MSI GTX 1060 Gamer X for his birthday and Mom comes home with a MSI Gamer X from AMD that was $75 cheaper, Mom is happy she saved money, AMD is happy but Jonny is invariably disappointed.

I am still rooting for an AMD product that brings home the numbers, not in core counts or nm's but something that actually matters, performance in the apps I run and power. If they had something that was better, they would be trying to distnguish their product from the competition not whining about their right to imitate its naming conventions.
 
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heise.de: The NDA should apply to all information provided by Nvidia, so it did not refer to a specific product or information. There was also no concrete expiration date.


Oh, right, sure thing. There was also a lawyer that said "I don't know what it means (so it should be fine". Those stupid Germans just worry about nothing...


Gamernexus has exactly 0 credibility in general, let alone in controversies like this one.
"That German site" is much bigger than you think, doesn't need cheap clicks, loses much more by not getting review samples in advance.

Just don't point out what Steve says 4min in to the video

GamerNexus Steve said:
From the reviewer side. A lot of the time when a product comes out. I'd say probably 90% of the time we don't sing a literal NDA
 
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cadaveca

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Wow. Wouldn't Heise.de be able to say the same for anyone ranked below them.
Smiley in my post = joke. But yeah, you could say that then. :slap: So what? :D

I'm more concerned that you might have taken me seriously. :wtf:
 
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