CNN is selling public domain images as NFTs

https://twitter.com/_cingraham/status/1471959671413952514

by donohoe • 5 years ago

65 38 5 years ago

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netizen-936824• 5 years ago

Good thing purchasing an NFT doesn't actually mean anything

JumpCrisscross• 5 years ago

Agreed. Don’t see the problem with this. The joke is on the people buying these.

BeKindAndLearn• 5 years ago

I have a couple issues as a third party:

1. NFTs and cryptocurrency have avoided being heavily regulated so far, and it seems businesses have begun pulling out there "history of fraud and market manipulation", textbooks. We have enough of an issue with bottom-to-top flows of wealth right now that just poo-pooing bad behavior because the people being scammed or stupid or arrogant doesn't exactly seem constructive. Especially when the public education system is what it is.

2. NFTs are the least efficient and convoluted ways you can solve the problem(s) at hand. It demands enormous amounts of power and it's use at any appreciative scale would overshadow the energy use of first-world individuals (PoS is still not here or being used by the major players, so it's not really an argument). And the hardware using this energy is expensive to produce, currently supply limited (hurting normal folks), and is regularly cycled. So while we're already struggling with climate change and environmental destruction, this technology aims to create an artificial spike that makes it even harder to address for no real benefit.

hericium• 5 years ago

I don't argue but I've read the same about Bitcoin.

impendingchange2• 5 years ago

Until courts start looking at the fraud behind it.

rvz• 5 years ago

So this is what it has gotten to for CNN? First peddling and spinning false news and now this?

Desperation for low viewing numbers and jumping into the scamming with NFTs much?

Well, scammers gonna scam.

petee• 5 years ago

Well Hubble's images are public domain, but it doesn't say if the archival footage pinned as the point of the NFT is CNN's own footage, which might be interesting for 'collectors'

I still think NFTs are stupid, but this title seems to be misleading either way.

paxys• 5 years ago

An NFT is a URL. Anyone can sell URLs pointing to anything.

I can mint and sell NFTs of something you hold the rights to and there's nothing legally wrong with it.

PretzelPirate• 5 years ago

An NFT might point to a URL or it might represent a self-contained digital asset. Yes, these are Art NFTs which generally (but not always) point to an external URL.

I certainly don’t see the value in releasing NFTs that represent public domain images if they don’t come with actual utility.

cool_dude85• 5 years ago

I certainly don’t see the value in releasing NFTs that represent public domain images if they don’t come with actual utility.

They're the same as any NFT really. Do people really care about the art quality of their apes? The whole gimmick is they're supposed to appreciate in value for some reason. So why couldn't a public domain image appreciate in value too?

pjc50• 5 years ago

Try minting some Disney NFTs and see how long that lasts.

zepto3• 5 years ago

What do you think would happen?

mwattsun3• 5 years ago

I understood NFTs better after reading this, what seems to me, fair and objective article and afterwards really don't see much utility in them. I can see how they might serve a purpose in a very narrow, specialized set of circumstances.

https://www.ask.com/culture/what-are-non-fungible-tokens-nft...

kranke1557• 5 years ago

Is this a joke? This article continues with the fully absurd “carbon narrative” that’s been imposed onto blockchain even though huge amounts of NFTs are being minted on the Tezos chain, which used orders of magnitude below Ethereum’s energy usage.

Minting an NFT on Tezos is something like turning your phone on in terms of energy usage. Please, let’s stop with the wild misinformation - not all NFTs are made the same way.

The ETH NFT scene is what it is I know a huge number of artists who don’t participate in it because it’s dumb af.

mwattsun3• 5 years ago

Is this a joke?

I don't think it's fair to call it a joke, but if your intention is to shut down discussion that works. There is a robust discussion about blockchain energy usage which doesn't appear to be ideological, but I don't know enough yet to say.

jollybean2• 5 years ago

BTC usage of enormous amounts of electricity is not a joke, no.

xhkkffbf• 5 years ago

Doesn't public domain mean that anyone in the public can use them. Last I checked, CNN is part of the public.

If people want to spend money on them, that's their decision.

olliej• 5 years ago

At least they aren't selling other people's property?

bootlooped• 5 years ago

I have a tangential question: what determines or guarantees the uniqueness of an NFT? My understanding is that the part of an NFT that is encoded on the blockchain is just some json (usually) metadata. Does the blockchain guarantee that same exact json metadata is not uploaded again?

swivelmaster• 5 years ago

No.

boublepop• 5 years ago

Technically I guess their are selling links to public domain images as NFTs which seems fair. I mean why would you not be allowed to link to public domain images?

ddanny• 5 years ago

if you use a public domain image as a starting point and edit it in ways that make it almost unrecognizable to the original image, is that legal?

CNN is selling public domain images as NFTs

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