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Comment by neya | Hacker News Reader

> I flew home that night, posted my meeting notes on my website, emailed all of my clients to announce the news, and went to sleep.

>When I woke, I had furious emails and voicemails from my contact at Apple.

>“What the hell are you doing? That meeting was confidential! Take those notes off your site immediately! Our legal department is furious!”

Wait, who the hell posts meeting notes on their website (and also emails all their clients without a written confirmation at the said meeting)? I would assume any meeting you'd have with a client/potential would be assumed to be confidential. I felt this particular move was very unprofessional on the OP's part.

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A meeting with a hundred of your closest friends isn't a meeting, much less a private meeting, it's a public announcement. Maybe if all of those hundred are your employees you could consider it private, but assuming it wouldn't leak would be naïve. Apple wanted a couple weeks head start on Rhapsody and Napster, and they fucked up and forgot to inform their guests that the announcement was under wraps. There's not more to it.

Right. More than that, you get NDAs signed before the meeting. I’ve never known this to not be standard practice. At least when the person you’re talking to doesn’t have a greater leverage in the meeting—but then you naturally restrict what you say under such a circumstance. This sounds like childish behavior on the part of Apple, but honestly when I’ve never been able to change the snooze time on the alarm app, that is what I expect. If I were CD Baby, I would have never gone back to that, as long term you’ve got greater leverage when all the competitors are getting access. In fact, I would have doubled down and paid developers to start working on iPod compatibility for the competitors.

Because it concerned my clients — the musicians.

Apple says “we want to sell all of your clients’ music now”.

I post something on the company blog, read mainly by my clients, saying Apple wants to sell your music now.

In all honesty, your slashdot post contains massive amount of proprietary Apple information that was disclosed to you, valuable statistics, Apple’s business plan and what not. This was at the time when Apple was vulnerable and much bigger competitors could have easily eaten their lunch. I can’t believe they had no NDAs. I think the original article is bit one sided story.

If there were no NDAs, every single bit of that "proprietary information" was public information.

Are you seriously appealing to sentimental sympathies right now? Apple is and was an entirely for-profit entity whose vendors are likewise. And we're supposed to extend one another sympathy? There are limits to professional courtesy.

If Apple was so vulnerable, failing to get attendees to sign NDAs was just more severe incompetence of the kind that made them vulnerable. It's not someone else's job to babysit them.

If a deal is inked, you can post, but even then usually you’d check in about messaging. I think you were just super pumped :) but it’s still a faux pas.

It’s odd that they forgot to make y’all sign something. I wonder why they played it that way.

But let’s say that they were in a rush and forgot. Then, why the anger when an apology and a sincere request would have been just as good.

And why was Jobs such a dick about it afterwards?

To me, it seems that he was angry that someone was making money off the artists before he was.

Confidentiality is never assumed. It's an explicit contract.

I guess it depends whether OP made their service as startup looking for a great exit, or a passion project based on their hobby that got extended to their friends.

Personal or business it doesn’t matter. If you met your friend for coffee and they told you they are pregnant (for example) would you feel emboldened to post on Twitter congratulations without even asking her if she wants the world to know?

I get that this was 2003 but if anything it would have seemed even more rude before social media made posting about your life online more acceptable.

But to use your analogy, if my friend invited a few hundred people she knew and told us she was pregnant, then yes, I would feel fine posting about it on Instagram.

The difference is that the pregnancy doesn’t affect the lives of all the people on Twitter. This guy was communicating with his clients, who had to respond to the news by working to prepare their albums for upload to iTunes. He had a perfectly legitimate reason for posting this on his website.

It was a meeting about a new service/product relevant to the services he provides his clients. It doesn’t seem that weird, especially if he saw his responsibility to then to be similar to that of a level or agent.

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