WikiLeaks may be in the business of disseminating corporate and government information, the owners of which would rather keep it in the dark, but when it comes to its own sensitive information, WikiLeaks plays tough too. According to a leaked non-disclosure agreement [PDF] signed by WikiLeaks staff, all of the collected leaks and documents are “solely the property of WikiLeaks,” and a “significant breach” of WikiLeaks’ NDA is assigned a monetary value of £12 million — A little under $20 million.
“You accept and agree that the information disclosed, or to be disclosed to you pursuant to this agreement is, by its nature, valuable proprietary commercial information,” the agreement reads, “the misuse or unauthorized disclosure of which would be likely to cause us considerable damage.”
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Interestingly, the agreement warns that any breach is likely to cause WikiLeaks to lose the “opportunity to sell the information to other news broadcasters and publishers.”
Leaking the NDA is considered a breach by the NDA, but whoever leaked the copy of the NDA to the New Statesman didn’t sign the NDA, so they might not be subject to the NDA’s penalty for leaking the NDA.
(New Statesman via Wired via Slashdot)
