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BBC cryptocurrency documentary pulled from air at last minute

theguardian.com

161–170 of 195 posts

Re: BBC cryptocurrency documentary pulled from air at last minute

#161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are a lot of places where there is enough land to build more and more, but the governments don't allow it. And there are also places such as san-francisco, where replacing single-family houses with apartment buildings would solve a lot of the housing crisis, but the government (and NIMBYs) don't allow it.

Even in a world with zero building regulation you're still running into constraints though. Sure, people could build more apartments which would slow growth in accommodation prices and maybe directly hurt the value of the neighbours' properties they overshadow, but land is still limited amd expensive (more expensive if you're allowed to build tenement blocks on it) and construction still physically intensive and expe…

I was born in a socialist country, where people built houses. Literally, you built first, dealt with papers later, and pretty much everyone had a house or an apartment. Government and companies built apartments for their workers, people built private houses themselves, mostly literally (every weekend, wheelbarrow, few sacks of cement, a bunch of bricks, a few friends, a case of beer,...).

After a bunch of regulation, now, the "papers" cost more than materials to build, and most of the area is zoned as eg farming area, even though there has never been any farming there. Of course, prices have gone up A LOT, there is a lot of NIMBYism, by people who already build their house, and don't want another one next to it, and young people are basically fucked.

We might disagree, but in places with available land (and there are many), the only thing that stands between housing and non-millionaire people are (local) governments and regulations.

Re: BBC cryptocurrency documentary pulled from air at last minute

#162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, you are not granted copyrights on the image attached to the NFT in all cases I've looked at, spoken to the people behind them and they also agreed. Doesn't mean this can't be done, but in each case I've looked at, granting of rights (and which specific rights do we even mean?) is not happening. Further more there is no obligation for anyone to do anything with the image linked to the NFT your the holder of.

Copyright is a right defined in existing legal systems. I said the NFT defines a new type of right in a new pseudo-legal system.

And if I infringe upon these new rights, do I get pseudo-sued in this pseudo-legal system?

Re: BBC cryptocurrency documentary pulled from air at last minute

#163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The relationship between the licence fee and the BBC isn’t that simple. You must pay the TV licence fee if you receive any broadcast television generally available to the public, regardless of if it’s BBC content or not. If you only watch Channel Four, and never BBC, you must still pay the licence fee. Your viewing habits are completely irrelevant. The TV licence comes from law, and the government happens to delegate…

> It’s unfair to criticise an organisation for failing to change something it has no legal ability to change The BBC is the government one way or another. So given the ministers are effectively the CEO then they are the ones who should be adapting as they have the control and report to the citizens who are analogous to shareholders. So yeah I can criticize the BBC for failing to adapt and do things that the people in…

I think you seriously misunderstand the relationship between the government and the BBC.

The whole thing is setup to create a clear firewall between the BBC and government to preserve the BBC’s impartiality and prevent it becoming a mouthpiece for whoever’s in power (it’s a separate debate as to how successful that is).

Ministers are not the CEO of the BBC. Not even close. The BBC has an entirely separate board that should have no relationship to the current government in power (something that BoJo is desperately trying to erode).

The whole point of all this is to explicitly make sure the BBC isn't a government controlled corporation, regardless of how much the government wishes it was.

> It's also worth noting the UK govt' spent $5.1bn on the BBC last year, in contrast Sky operated on $5.2bn in revenue. There are clearly some huge inefficiencies at the BBC that can be remedied internally without government approval. Bemoaning $5.1bn as not being enough is garbage. I mean, ITV operates on $2.1bn in revenue. Cutting back the waste seems appropriate to me.

You clearly have no idea how huge the BBC’s legally mandated remit is. Comparing the BBC to Sky is like comparing TfL to Uber. Sure they’re both transport companies, but TfL is legally mandated to provide a good transport service to all, regardless of background or income, and treat their employees well. Uber can fuck their drivers, and refuse to provide services to the unprofitable.

Re: BBC cryptocurrency documentary pulled from air at last minute

#164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How are you going to get a picture of the Mona Lisa? Take a photo? Your not allowed. The people who own the Mona Lisa, prevent people from taking photos of. They instead they take a photo of it themselves, which is a new creative work and has copyrights. Now they have controlled the market on photos of the Mona Lisa and you need to license photos of it from them. That's what I heard once anyhow.

Here you go: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Mona_Lisa,_by_Leonardo_da... Resolution 7,479 × 11,146, or 83 megapixels. From that page: The official position taken by the Wikimedia Foundation is that "faithful reproductions of two-dimensional public domain works of art are public domain". This photographic reproduction is therefore also considered to be in the public domain in the United States. In other jurisdicti…

To be pedantic, though. Just because the WMF (through its counsel, presumably) "takes a position", doesn't infer that "therefore" this piece is public domain.

It may well be, but unless the WMF created the piece, it has no standing to declare this. I may well be reading too much into things, but I know also that the WMF has taken "interesting" legal positions on art (a famous recent photo set up by a wildlife photographer where a curious primate, IIRC, wandered up to the camera and depressed the shutter).

Re: BBC cryptocurrency documentary pulled from air at last minute

#165
post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Have you ever wondered why you can't just save up for a house and buy it with cash? You can. > What part is the bank actually playing in this transaction? They're lending you the money. I assume you have some different, less obvious answers to this? If you're against the lending of money for interest, how about a halal mortgage? https://www.qardus.com/news/halal-mortgages-everything-you-n...

> You can. Practically speaking, not really. A tiny fraction of people might earn enough to save enough to buy a house, but most will be priced out at every stage by people taking mortgages. Some people inherit existing property and trade it for other property. But if you are starting from scratch it's virtually impossible. Do you know anyone who has done it? > They're lending you the money. Are they? If I lend you m…

Yeah, states usually do grant banks a limited right to create money. But once again, this is not based on hype. These states often have sovereignty, land, allegiance of their citizens, recognized legitimacy, police force, serviceable tax regimes, tanks, etc.

Re: BBC cryptocurrency documentary pulled from air at last minute

#166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can save in USDT for what it's worth.

s/USDT/DAI, please . Or sUSD from Synthetix, or EURS if you want to hold euros. Or GBPP if you want to hold GBP. Anything but USDT. USDT is poison.

Yeah I was just using it as an example.

Re: BBC cryptocurrency documentary pulled from air at last minute

#167

It's astonishing to me that people will just buy into any success story that involves crypto and NFTs. People don't question why poorly drawn pictures are being bought for thousands of dollars, don't question why there are hundreds of altcoins on the market and some "cryptocurrency experts" are supposedly "offering free tips" on investment. The whole space is rife with scams and embellishments and yet there are so ma…

> poorly drawn pictures are being bought not even the picture. The url to a picture on a random site.

Yes. That there's no hash of the underlying "art" is astonishing. It really is purely, as far as I understand, the URL, and as such depending on DNS and the hoster.

Re: BBC cryptocurrency documentary pulled from air at last minute

#168
post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You can. Practically speaking, not really. A tiny fraction of people might earn enough to save enough to buy a house, but most will be priced out at every stage by people taking mortgages. Some people inherit existing property and trade it for other property. But if you are starting from scratch it's virtually impossible. Do you know anyone who has done it? > They're lending you the money. Are they? If I lend you m…

Yeah, states usually do grant banks a limited right to create money. But once again, this is not based on hype. These states often have sovereignty, land, allegiance of their citizens, recognized legitimacy, police force, serviceable tax regimes, tanks, etc.

So you're making an argument to the status quo?

I'm not sure are about states granting banks the right to create money. Do you have a source for this? As far as I can tell they do it simply because we all use them and trust them to keep the ledger. The state (meaning, the US or UK) doesn't seem to have much control over it.

Re: BBC cryptocurrency documentary pulled from air at last minute

#169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It’s unfair to criticise an organisation for failing to change something it has no legal ability to change The BBC is the government one way or another. So given the ministers are effectively the CEO then they are the ones who should be adapting as they have the control and report to the citizens who are analogous to shareholders. So yeah I can criticize the BBC for failing to adapt and do things that the people in…

I think you seriously misunderstand the relationship between the government and the BBC. The whole thing is setup to create a clear firewall between the BBC and government to preserve the BBC’s impartiality and prevent it becoming a mouthpiece for whoever’s in power (it’s a separate debate as to how successful that is). Ministers are not the CEO of the BBC. Not even close. The BBC has an entirely separate board that…

Indeed, the BBC cannot give in to government pressure. It sets great store by factual accuracy. And if the defense of the realm is at stake, it has to be very responsible.

See the wonderful documentary^W comedy Yes, Minister.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B9tzoGFszog

Re: BBC cryptocurrency documentary pulled from air at last minute

#170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

s/USDT/DAI, please . Or sUSD from Synthetix, or EURS if you want to hold euros. Or GBPP if you want to hold GBP. Anything but USDT. USDT is poison.

Yeah I was just using it as an example.

Ok, got it. It's not that I want to pick on you, just that we should use Tether and USDT as an example only when we are talking about scumbags who contribute to make the whole crypto community look like irresponsible frauds.
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