Im looking for a way to do a none disclosure agreement over the internet. I know how to do one face to face but online people dont use real names so accountability is not there. Any feed back would be appreciated.
Use snail mail. Alternatively, PDFs can be signed digitally if you both have digital signature certs, and digital signatures have legal standing in both your countries. Also, ask a real lawyer.
That would be one way to do it but realistically you can’t enforce that kind of thing over the internet anyway, the games industry is fighting a losing battle in this regard for sure against filesharers. I think the best thing you can do is take a much more open approach and show early gameplay footage as a lot of indie developers are doing now or even offer early access for paying players if you want to have them test things.
There will be morons who crap on it but the ones who have been around will likely be able to give you very valuable advice and if you openly show the progress people will appreciate it a lot more. I know as a gamer I do, I’ve been observing the progress of games like Star Citizen and DayZ for awhile now.
Can I get people to sign a full disclosure agreement? Then they HAVE to talk about my games with everyone they meet. That’d be great.
Seriously though, in this day and age you can’t worry about people stealing your ideas. If you have a really valuable idea or technique, such as a cure for cancer, or a way of sending 1000 gigs of data over a telephone line in one second, then you should get a patent. if you’ve got a really good story and characters, perhaps the next Star Wars or Angry Birds, then you can thoroughly document your ideas, put them in a sealed envelope and mail them to yourself. They will then be in a sealed, date stamped envelope ready to be produced in court when someone tries to rip off your great idea. If the other person can’t produce a similar piece of evidence showing they developed the idea before you then you’d win any case that you cared to pursue.
Yes, WIPs and stuff are definitely a much better way of stopping people ripping off your ideas, my point is as well if you post them all up and be very open about it everyone will know before hand it was your idea so if somebody tries to rip you off they’re not going to buy it.
If you are to the NDA point, You had best be on a real and first/last name basis with the person. If you can’t get that then jump ship now.
What a pain. Hmmm anybody know about copyright? Is that a good alternative?
If you want a legal contract, then you have to use legal names.
TIP: You’ll want to spell it: non-disclosure agreement. That way it’ll carry more legal weight.
If you create the work, you have the copyright … always!
From there it is up to you how you distribute the work. The legal aspects should be explained in the licence. There are technical methods to protect the work. The only secure protection is to not distribute the work … which is not really an option.
But this works in two directions. Make sure you do not violate any local laws on your distribution path (e.g. copyright, trademark). This can become very expensive.
Finally you need to decide how much effort you want to spend to match your goals. At indie level there is usually not really much protection needed. But I’m no lawyer. Do not rely on me.
Think i useing facebook for verification of the NDA? I dont really have anything that can be called a useable demo. I want to use a non-disclosure agreement
To recruit for a larger project.
What is the purpose of this NDC? Typically it is a contract that specifies some rules and what happens if they are violated. If you want to take serious legal actions, you should talk to a lawyer. I’m sure he will tell you you need at least the real name and address of the contract partner.
How much can you trust facebook, email and other websites (personally and legally)?
Again, ask a lawyer. They can tell you the options you have and they will help you writing a legal NDC (or similar document).