Christine Andersen wrote:
All the pages of threats and liability that have accumulated later are in fact side issues.
I sometimes hear that these situations never arise in practice, or that the claims would not stand up in court, but in that case, there is absolutely no reason to circulate them and ask people to sign them.
As suggested above, offer them your own NDA, and if they cannot accept reasonable terms, then simply refuse to sign anything, and tell them to remove you from their database.
The liability this NDA mentioned was only for violations of the NDA. I told them I would not sign anything that stipulated unlimited liability, in any situation, and especially because I did not want to be part of that project anyway. The agency then offered, by e-mail, to split any such damages. All this ridiculous exchange because they want no "administrative burden", which, like Paul said, was exactly what their cut was for. I advised them to create a project team, and that's the end of it, as far as I am concerned.
Thank you again for your valuable thoughts!