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BBC cryptocurrency documentary pulled from air at last minute

theguardian.com

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Re: BBC cryptocurrency documentary pulled from air at last minute

#171

Post by FabHK »

sva_ wrote: post #6
antihero wrote: post #3

> The Guardian asked the BBC if it was confident in his claimed financial returns and questioned why the programme’s promotional material did not mention that Hassan’s cryptocurrency Orfano was abruptly shut down in October, with many unhappy investors claiming they were left out of pocket as a result. I feel like this is the key thing. He probably made the money with a scamcoin and the BBC nearly aired something tha…

> As per the Orfano website, Orfano is a unique Rugpull-Proof coin moulded by the community, looking to benefit the lives of orphans in the poorest countries That'd be especially scummy, to defraud people with something like that.

Ouch, indeed (from coinmarketcap):

> The coin has been Audited by Techrate and has passed this assessment.

> The main purpose of the token is to provide support and life-saving aid to orphans in the poorest countries. The future plans of the team are to explore partnerships with other coins to further use cases such as NFT marketplaces.

> Owners: Hanad Hassan (CEO) - Founded the coin alongside Ahmed Mohammed. Hanad Hassan has prior experience working withing the charity field however he will also be recruiting team members with a wealth of experience in project management and charitable organisations. Mr Hassan has also worked as a team member for 2 separate coins which have achieved high levels of success, $PIT and $SAFEMOON.

> Ahmed Mohammed (CMO) - Mr Mohammed is the owner of a digital marketing agency and has utilised his expertise to market $ORFANO and gain excellent exposure for the token.

Re: BBC cryptocurrency documentary pulled from air at last minute

#172

Post by monkeynotes »

avianlyric wrote: post #163
monkeynotes wrote: post #125

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…

You can have a parent company specifying budget, policy, and mandates whilst being entirely hands off on the day-to-day.

> The BBC has an entirely separate board that should have no relationship to the current government in power

The director/board all report to the Queen, who defers to the government who enact mandates for the BBC. The government appoints senior members. I just don't see how you can say the BBC is autonomous in terms of what its board decides.

> From Wikipedia: The chair and four non-executive members representing the four nations are appointed by the Queen-in-Council, on the advice of the UK Secretary of State. Five other non-executive members are appointed by the board and the four executive members are chosen by the board.

I mean, seriously, how is that independent from the government? They literally have government appointed people on the board.

> Comparing the BBC to Sky is like comparing TfL to Uber

No it isn't. TfL is not a private car service, like at all. BBC and Sky are largely apples to apples in terms of their primary interests.

Sky manages to operate a very broad set of programming, a news division, its own distribution technology, Sky employes 10k more staff than the BBC too.

I think this article kinda sums up what I feel is the reality of the BBC's government independence: https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/ourbeeb/bbc-is-neither-inde...

Re: BBC cryptocurrency documentary pulled from air at last minute

#173

Post by blfr »

globular-toast wrote: post #168
blfr wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'm making the argument or maybe just an observation that the current financial system has a basis in hard reality whereas blockchain/NFT/metaverse/digital ownership seem to break away from that.

The banks are obviously granted the limited right to create money by the government. Whether it's through regulation post facto or a charter a priori, by now virtually all modern states have a wide control over their banking systems, including setting required reserve rates.

Re: BBC cryptocurrency documentary pulled from air at last minute

#174

Post by winternett »

luckyandroid wrote: post #11
WilTimSon wrote: post #2

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…

Every person I've spoken to who's told me they're interested in crypto literally only care about it to make money, and have no interest in learning how it works. They all treat every last crypto-based use as investment like stocks, and not as a normal economic choice (e.g. "I want $3000 worth of bitcoin to buy a car" is not something people are doing, instead it's all "I want $3000 worth of bitcoin because the intern…

The 80's stock market was a pimer for this kind of culture. The era of excess led people to normalize bad behavior, enthusiastic marketing of assets, and a culture of greed at any cost. Within markets where products are essential, it creates chaos, and to the lay person, it creates a false impression that success is tangible, and that because it's backed by celebrities and corporations that it is all credible.

We're hurling towards an era of false economy, the results are likely to be harsh if we allow it to continue without being reigned in. The celebrities that back scams, as well as corps need to be held accountable because the main problem that it's growing in popularity is all of the glossy polish on the lies of phony payouts.

Re: BBC cryptocurrency documentary pulled from air at last minute

#175

Post by tchock23 »

yodelshady wrote: post #22

If you're looking for a podcast, the BBC have previously produced a crypto documentary that did not miss the salient fact: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p07nkd84 Made some long journeys fly by.

Exit Scam is also worth checking out: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/exit-scam/id1565845318

(Disclosure: I know one of the producers)

Re: BBC cryptocurrency documentary pulled from air at last minute

#176

Post by onesafari »

wink wrote: post #108
WilTimSon wrote: post #2

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…

I dunno, I am not really questioning why some limited-run sneakers are being bought for thousands of dollars. Or why people spend 50k on their bathroom. Or why old Nintendo cartridges go for enormous prices. Or diamonds. I don't see the difference here. Now, I also don't get why NFTs have taken off AT ALL. But I don't see how they're really different than anything I listed above, except maybe more unstable or even mo…

No post body was provided.

Re: BBC cryptocurrency documentary pulled from air at last minute

#177

Post by knorker »

FireBeyond wrote: post #164
knorker wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 photogr…

Fair enough. And until courts have ruled, we don't actually know. WMF has vested interest in normalizing it, but on the other hand they do have lawyers so it's not a completely bonkers idea.

And the monkey selfie you mention was actually not obvious legally one way or the other. I believe the human eventually won, but it was down to the details.

In order for something to be copyrightable it needs to have minimal "threshold of originality" to it. In the monkey copyright case the photo clearly had. In the photo I linked to? Much less clearly so.

The EU (because Mona Lisa) is summarized as "The test for the threshold of originality is in the European Union whether the work is the author's own intellectual creation". (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Threshold_of_originality).

One would have a hard time arguing that framing a painting perfectly in the viewfinder is "the author's own intellectual creation".

In the US it's "at least some minimal degree of creativity".

But yes, both could be circumvented by injecting the painting equivalent of "paper towns", I suppose.

But in any case any of these people could start selling copies:

https://jeffhaltrechtphotoblog.com/2015/09/01/selfie-mayhem-...

But of course we could then worry about what a court would say about a "no photos, please" sign and whether it's a binding contract that signs over any copyright over photos in the place (uh, doubtful).

It's an interesting legal area, and I don't reject the idea you mentioned of de facto re-copyright as a whole. I just don't think it applies to Mona Lisa specifically, for these reasons.

But you should also remember that there's a difference between "You're not allowed" and "You are not able" to take a photo.

Unless you have a contract signing away the copyright to the photo, all the establishment can do is ask you to leave after you've already taken the photo.

And I highly doubt a checkbox ToS when you bought the ticket will be considered informed consent of reassignment of copyright.

Re: BBC cryptocurrency documentary pulled from air at last minute

#178

Post by FireBeyond »

knorker wrote: post #177
FireBeyond wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 photogr…

Fair enough. And until courts have ruled, we don't actually know. WMF has vested interest in normalizing it, but on the other hand they do have lawyers so it's not a completely bonkers idea. And the monkey selfie you mention was actually not obvious legally one way or the other. I believe the human eventually won, but it was down to the details. In order for something to be copyrightable it needs to have minimal "thr…

> And the monkey selfie you mention was actually not obvious legally one way or the other. I believe the human eventually won, but it was down to the details.

Sorry, you're right there - my phrasing was definitely ambiguous. Like you say, there was a lot of nuance. But Wikipedia (initially contributors, then I believe, the Foundation itself) was very aggressive from the outset with "Screw you, no copyright to be found here!" which is an "interesting" stance to take when it's not at all so clearcut.

Re: BBC cryptocurrency documentary pulled from air at last minute

#179

Post by captaincaveman »

knorker wrote: post #152
captaincaveman wrote: post #141

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…

It's certainly a complex mess :)

Re: BBC cryptocurrency documentary pulled from air at last minute

#180

Post by knorker »

FireBeyond wrote: post #178
knorker wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fair enough. And until courts have ruled, we don't actually know. WMF has vested interest in normalizing it, but on the other hand they do have lawyers so it's not a completely bonkers idea. And the monkey selfie you mention was actually not obvious legally one way or the other. I believe the human eventually won, but it was down to the details. In order for something to be copyrightable it needs to have minimal "thr…

> And the monkey selfie you mention was actually not obvious legally one way or the other. I believe the human eventually won, but it was down to the details. Sorry, you're right there - my phrasing was definitely ambiguous. Like you say, there was a lot of nuance. But Wikipedia (initially contributors, then I believe, the Foundation itself) was very aggressive from the outset with "Screw you, no copyright to be foun…

You're right to point it out. WMF does have a point of view and that case does show that their opinion on copyrightability is not necessarily unbiased.
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