At 4:35PM yesterday, Ben Allfree was killed when he suffered a blow to the head from an oversized Nondisclosure Agreement. According to witnesses, an unidentified entrepreneur struck Ben with an NDA after claiming that he had a “killer” business idea.
“Before Ben could react,” said Rick Schaffer who witnessed the event, “the guy pulled out an NDA and began beating Ben over the head with it. Ben had just been trying to help. He tried to get up, but like an aging champion, I think he had just been hit one time too many.”
“This is sleeper problem in the IT community,” said Sheriff Robert Kitson who arrived on the scene just moments after paramedics failed to resuscitate Ben. “People with no training or qualifications are using them without provocation. [The NDAs] are then left behind in the wake of bad ideas and pose a real hazard. Children are finding them in playgrounds.”
An upcoming Forrester Research study exposes the delusion-inducing power of a web idea and links dementia with the overuse of NDAs. The study concludes that an entrepreneur with no means to capitalize his idea is most susceptible to delusion, often convincing himself that the competitive advantage lies in the secrecy of the idea itself rather than the execution of the idea.
Ben dedicated his life to better living through painless programming. “Ironically,” said medical examiner Benjamin Ellsworth, “I’m sure he died in severe pain. Those NDAs hurt.”
hilarious! True the NDA is way overused. I usually filter ‘real’ people with a phone conversation. Usually this saves time. On the other hand with all the offshore development and the lack of enforcement of IP in places like China and India giving your idea away without some sort of protection is quite scary.