-> Dispute Over Unauthorized Reviews Leaves Intel Embarrassed
->
-> By JOHN MARKOFF
->
-> SAN FRANCISCO -- In an incident shedding light on the
-> sometimes too-close-for-comfort
-> relationship between computer publications and the companies
-> they cover, Intel Corp. recently
-> threatened to withdraw advertising from two German magazines
-> for unflattering, unauthorized reviews
-> of a new Intel chip that is not yet on the market.
->
-> Word of the dispute, which has circulated on the Internet in
-> the last few days, has prompted
-> hundreds of computer users to send e-mail in support of a
-> third German reviewer and to post angry
-> messages on Intel's site on the World Wide Web.
->
-> The episode is an apparent embarrassment to Intel, which has a
-> corporate policy of not linking its
-> placement of advertisements to the editorial treatment it
-> receives in publications that write about the
-> computer industry.
->
-> An Intel spokesman said Tuesday that several of the company's
-> executives had violated that policy
-> by placing pressure on the German magazines. The company is
-> trying to resolve the matter with the
-> publications and the Intel executives involved, the spokesman,
-> Tom Waldrop, said.
->
-> "It's not acceptable for us to tie editorial content to
-> advertising," Waldrop said. "It's the first time that
-> anyone here can remember that something like this has
-> happened."
->
-> The publications are two of Germany's leading computer
-> magazines: C'T Magazin fur
-> Computertechnik and PC Professionelle, which is produced by
-> the largest American computer
-> publisher, Ziff-Davis Publishing Corp., a unit of Softbank
-> Corp.
->
-> While these and other reputable computer trade publications
-> typically pride themselves on keeping an
-> arm's length between the articles they write and the ads they
-> sell, their need to work closely with
-> computer companies can sometimes cause conflicts.
->
-> One common practice, for example, is for magazines to accept
-> products for review before they
-> become commercially available, but not to publish the review
-> until the product is officially announced.
->
-> In this case, the trouble arose when the magazines obtained
-> the computers from an unidentified
-> computer maker. They contended, as a result, that they were
-> not violating any agreement by
-> publishing the reviews of the Pentium II chip, which Intel
-> plans to introduce by midyear.
->
-> The reviews, published in January, said that the chip was
-> disappointing, compared with previous
-> Pentiums; had hardware connections that would make it hard to
-> use for updating existing PC's, and
-> paled in comparison with a new Pentium clone from Advanced
-> Micro Devices Inc. called the K6.
->
-> The incident came to light last week after a German physician
-> and computer hobbyist, Dr. Thomas
-> Pabst, reported on his World Wide Web page that Intel had
-> pressured the magazines. He wrote that
-> editors of both publications had asked him to remove his own
-> independent, critical review of the chip
-> from his Web site. The magazines had given Pabst the equipment
-> that he reviewed.
->
-> Pabst, who for a year has published detailed computer
-> performance information on his
-> English-language Web page, Tom's Hardware Guide
-> (http://sysdoc.pair.com), has gained a global
-> reputation as an independent source of advice for computer
-> enthusiasts. The site, until recently
-> operated on a computer located in the United States, is
-> visited by 15,000 to 20,000 people daily,
-> Pabst said.
->
-> Because the magazines feared not only advertising reprisals
-> but legal action from Intel, Pabst said, he
-> also considered himself at risk -- despite a public outpouring
-> of support for him on the Internet. He
-> left his review on the Web, but moved it to a computer outside
-> the jurisdiction of United States law.
->
-> "I'm not a large publishing firm," Pabst said in a telephone
-> interview. "If Intel sues me, I'm quite
-> vulnerable."
->
-> Intel officials, however, said they had not contacted Pabst,
-> and were no longer contemplating legal
-> action against the magazines. The company's real concern, they
-> said, was with whichever computer
-> maker had violated its agreements with Intel by circulating
-> the new Pentium hardware surreptitiously.
->
-> But C'T Magazin executive editor Georg Schnurer said his
-> publication was visited by Intel's
-> European and German marketing directors in mid-February. He
-> said the editors expressed
-> displeasure with the unauthorized review.
->
-> "They threatened legal action by Intel," Schnurer said. "They
-> also told us that they were willing to
-> remove the magazine from the 'Intel Inside' cooperative
-> advertising program."
->
-> Waldrop, the Intel spokesman, confirmed that account. And he
-> said that Intel executives had also
-> visited editors of PC Professionelle.
->
-> Intel officials said that one of their concerns was that the
-> reviews of test versions of the Pentium II
-> chip were based on premature assessments of the performance of
-> the chip that will eventually reach
-> the market.
->
-> "You provide preproduction parts to customers so that they can
-> begin to design their computer
-> systems," Waldrop said. "These parts don't typically produce
-> results that match the performance of
-> the final commercial products."
->
-> An executive at Ziff-Davis, who spoke on the grounds that he
-> not be identified, said that the
-> company's American and British computer publications had seen
-> the technical data used by PC
-> Professionelle and had decided not to publish the information
-> because it was based on a prototype
-> version of the Pentium II.
->
-> The incident may reveal other differences between the American
-> and European computer publishing
-> markets. Several American computer industry publishing
-> veterans said that strong-arm tactics by
-> large computer and software companies were relatively
-> commonplace outside of the United States.
->
-> John C. Dvorak, a longtime computer industry columnist who
-> publishes columns in two Ziff-Davis
-> magazines in the United States, PC Magazine and PC Computing,
-> said that he had once been
-> "blackballed" by an Italian magazine after the publication was
-> pressured by a big American software
-> company over a negative review that Dvorak had written.
->
-> "This practice on the part of large companies overseas to
-> intimidate magazines is pretty common,"
-> Dvorak said. "So this doesn't surprise me."
->
<< end of forwarded material >>
-
HAVE YOU RESTARTED YOUR COMPUTER LATELY?
Restarting the computer frees up space that,
over one or more days, can get filled with files
the computer uses only temporarily. - NeXTStep Power Tips, pg. 19
<> tbyars@earthlink.net <>