I think there is a lot of truth behind this and, in my opinion, Ms Holten does share in some of the responsibility for at least the existence of these pictures. Being a young and likely naïve person without much relationship experience (which can apply to both men and women), she allowed her boyfriend to take those intimate pictures. Loss of private information is not a new occurrence and there have been some big stories about data theft or loss in the past decade or so. Ms Holten must have realized that these intimate pictures might still have ended up on the internet even if her boyfriend hadn't posted them: phones get lost or stolen all the time; personal computers and cloud storage services are not always secure, etc. Ms Holten seems like an intelligent woman, so I think one can assume that she was at least aware of the risks and, at the time, accepted them.

If Ms Holten's boyfriend had taken the pictures without her knowledge and then released them to the internet, she would clearly, at least in my opinion, have zero responsibility. That is not the case though. She willingly allowed the creation of the original erotic pictures and accepted the risks associated with their existence. That does not make her any less of a victim, but she is partly responsible for the existence of the pictures; if the pictures didn't exist, her boyfriend couldn't have put them on the internet and she wouldn't be subject to the ridicule she is receiving now.

A good example is sharing your banking username and password with someone. This is intimate information that you might only ever share with someone that you trust completely. Even so, many banks are very clear that this is a violation of their terms and conditions and can result in you being held responsible for any monetary losses incurred from unauthorized use. Another example: Enterprise administrators are constantly admonishing users for writing down their network credentials and leaving them lying around. While someone shouldn't use your credentials without your consent, that doesn't mean they won't and therefore you have the responsibility to protect that information. To me this is a demonstration of common sense: don't expose information that you can't afford to lose control of. With that said, Ms Holten's boyfriend absolutely committed a crime and should be punished. Furthermore, it's likely that many of the unsolicited emails that she received overstepped the line between opinion and harassment. I have no argument with that.

Lastly, releasing nude images of herself in order to regain control of her life is admirable and shows courage, but it's naïve to assume that it will shame or impact, in any way, the lives of her harassers; the media headlines about her "getting revenge" are laughable and nonsensical. Ultimately, the new nude pictures probably just gives her harassers more material to enjoy. Still, if it helps her move on, power to her. After all, it is her choice. I'm curious if Ms Holten will post a follow-up about the response to her new images.

You are not allowed to 'self link' on this site. The video came from your own youtube account. That is against Sift rules, and a reason to be banned.
Here is the rule you violated.

Please do not self link.

While you may see this site as a great way to promote a project you are working on or promoting, it would be bad for our content if everyone just put up videos of them and their friends doing random things. If you are associated with a project you think is truly amazing and must be shared, please contact us. We'll take a look at it and if we also think it's great too, we'll post it for you. If you attempt to post it yourself, your video and account will be deleted. Hey, it's harsh, but it's harsh love.

What exactly consitutes a self link?

If your post is not a Sponsored Video (the only allowed way to promote your own content) and any of the following is true about a particular video you are considering submitting, it is a self link, with NO exceptions for any member:


◾The video is associated with your account on the video host (i.e., you uploaded it to YouTube, Vimeo, etc.).
◾You played any role, no matter how large or small, in any aspect of the production of the video.
◾You are in any way responsible for or involved in marketing, promoting, or any other manner of proliferating the video.
◾You could receive any form of compensation (monetary or otherwise) as a result of the submission or subsequent views.
◾You are somehow represented in the content of the video (whether photographically, artistically, audibly, or metaphorically) without the approval of a site administrator.


If you self link, regardless of your logic or explanation, you are violating the posting guidelines. There are no exceptions for any reason, whatsoever.

Finally, submitting a video that is considered spam falls within our definition of a self-link. If you create an account solely to post a video for whatever reason, but do not actually participate in VideoSift in any other way before or after, you may be considered a spammer/self-promoter and your account is subject to banning.

Exempt from our self-link definition is an embed that is supplied to another member's post when fixing a Dead Pool video or adding a *backup embed (see star powers). Bear in mind that this exemption does not apply to your own posts.

@VoodooV: "Every one of these youtube crusaders are comfortably enjoying the perks of a system they despise."

What perks? Like roads and firemen? You know, it's not like we couldn't have those things without government. And those kinds of services are only a small portion of the federal budget. In fact, from all the excise taxes collected on gasoline, tobacco and alcohol, they'd cover the roads completely, which costs around $60 billion annually. In fact, things like the EPA, Dept. of Trans, NASA, Dept. of Edu, all cost less than the revenue the federal government categorizes as "other." Look it up: http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/historicals

So what about all the wars and militarism? Is that, too, a perk? And the prison industrial complex that locks up 1% of our population? What are these perks you speak of?

Even Ayn Rand took gov't assistance.

I love it when statists bring this up. I personally am not an Objectivist, and find lots of flaws with their ideology, but this is a cheap blow. Obviously it shows the economic illiteracy of most statists. For one, she's forced to pay into social security, so therefore why shouldn't she receive some of it back? And second, if you spend more than a couple seconds reading about U.S. monetary policy, you'd know that the purchasing power of the dollar is reduced over time due to inflation, and hence savings are always impacted. This should alarm you instead of excite you.

The whole thing is infested with logical fallacies: false equivalencies, ad homs, strawmen, and even a no true scotsman thrown in for shits and giggles.

By all means don't take any time to point out which things he said were these things. No, that'd be helpful, and we wouldn't want to cloudy any appeals to emotion with pesky things like fact and well thought out rebuttals.

they spend all this time criticizing the problems of gov't and NEVER ONCE demonstrate how it would work without these systems.

I think there are plenty who do. It's just that statists don't accept those answers, or any answers that don't emulate the current status quo systems they're accustomed to. I'm not interested in replacing public schools with another bureaucracy.

They'll still use a monetary unit issued by the same international bankers I'm sure, so the political distinction is largely moot.

Comparing by industry and level of education is not sufficient to really see what is going on, unfortunately. Two people could work in the same industry, in completely different jobs. Two people could have bachelor's degrees, in completely different fields. As it happens these are two of the major contributors to the gap. I've seen it both in my life, and in this study, from just a few years ago. It concludes that the gap is between 5 and 7% for equivalent employees. That means people with similar credentials performing similar jobs. Here is the study http://www.consad.com/content/reports/Gender%20Wage%20Gap%20Final%20Report.pdf

Here are the reasons for the discrepancies, as they see them, in no particular order:
- More men than women tend to get educations in fields that pay more (ie. engineering vs teaching).
- More women work at part time jobs, which tend to have lower wages.
- More women tend to take parental leave.
- Women tend to place more value in the non-monetary dimension of a job than men (benefits, location, etc).

Sure, people shouldn't be punished for their gender. On the surface everyone would obviously agree with that statement I believe. If you dig a bit deeper though it's not so clear. Imagine it from the side of the employer. You have two candidates for a job, one that is statistically more likely to leave work for one or more extended periods. Each time that happens, it will cost you X$ to fill the void left. Divide that cost over the average term of employment, and you have a pretty strong case for a wage gap. Now, imagine that the decision was made for the company to ignore this cost, and simply swallow it. Assuming that they don't just increase their payroll budget to float it, we'll see wages for other people, completely unrelated to the issue cut so as to make room for it. Is that injustice more to your taste? It's worth mentioning that it would provide a clear quantifiable justification for hiring men over women.

Reaction times yes, but I think having a sufficient degree of certainty that the correct decision will be made is hard to conceive.

Imagine the legal liability of a clear software failure. Even if average accident rates were lower for automated cars, a clear incidence of failure would be a huge monetary legal risk. Whereas, if legal exceptions were carved out for the likes of Google, I doubt there would be very good consumer uptake.

I would suspect their automation algorithm are highly based on visual inputs. Pre-available GPS mapping data would get them only so far. These visual inputs are hugely variable. The number of different car makes, times of day, weather and road conditions among other things, would make for a incredible amount of scenarios to envisage.

I think voice recognition is very similar, if anything more constrained. The deciphering of combination of pitch, accent and pronunciation is a far simpler and smaller domain that we haven't mastered. That would seem to me to be demonstrable proof that automated cars to the level of reliability we would expect, are currently inconceivable.

I don't know if that's really a point missed. This paradox that we give up certain freedoms to live in a free society isn't new or controversial imo. The discussion, and the thing Snowden seems to be addressing, is that of a simple cost benefit analysis. I'd wager that a proportion of Americans might, given the revelations on the NSA, still opt for them to continue or even increase their operations in the belief it might make them safer. If they are convinced that not only does this collection of data not offer them protection, but it also comes at great monetary expense, then they might reconsider.

You are right. They have taken it to a very extreme level. However, I can see their rationale to it. It's essentially a domino effect in that if the first person hadn't leaked it, then the 100k others wouldn't have gotten ahold of it. Does that make each one worth $450k . . . no.

I wouldn't mind seeing massive piraters sued for the monetary value of everything in their playlist (i.e., if it's a buck off iTunes, and they have 100k sounds, then they stole 100k.)

To say that every pirated piece is a lost sale, you are correct to say no. However, it still makes it a theft. While I technically didn't lose money . . . you still stole it. That's why I believe in ad revenue such as iTunes Radio, Pandora, I heart Radio etc. So I get doubly pissed when content providers make a song free via advertising, and then people bitch about that. lol Like, Hulu.

People normally pay $100/mo to watch 14 minutes of commercials per hour, but complain when they pay nothing to watch only 3 minutes worth.

I was all for ad revenue, except, my brother and I sold graphics. Not exactly something we could put ads on. We actually had people who'd buy it from us, and then throw it up on their site for a fraction of the price….

In that regard, if someone is profiting off my work, then the fabled revenue lost is 100% tangible. So for Megaupload et al who made real money (not just legit P2P sharing) I'm all for sticking them with the maximum fine possible. If I make a piece of digital goods and you make $1,000 off it, then that's my grand, not yours.

Which is why there are big stock photo/video sites who basically screw over the little person but are at least legit. They pay their up loaders, albeit small amounts, to generate profit off having tons of content. Way more content than any one individual can create. So the same as Megaupload, only, they're not stealing or encouraging people indirectly to use their service to host any and all files you'd like to share while we knowingly look the other way towards our profit margins.

Anyway, that's mostly a rant at this point. :-p

This ends on a positive note so not too dark really. Just a tale of hatred towards consumerism.

Our social contract with government changes in the same way that the Apple Terms of Service changes. No way to back out of it and live a life of remote peace... SPEND.. YOUR. MONEY. Taxes, shmaxes, there's no more better judge of WASTING your goddamn money than your own judgement.

Sir, you are at risk of not spending every last fucking dime at Walmart. Or Target. Or Best Buy. Do you want your economy to be destroyed? Your leaders have already given up on you, so this is your last chance before monetary disciplinary action.

But getting trampled to death in a black friday savings riot does not represent risk because the true risk that matters in this world is the risk of assholes not getting your money.

Because fuck you if you don't want to be part of the dogpile.

It won't happen... the people we're talking about are the kind of people who know how to move and hide money, and they know it very well. They may win in court but actually ever seeing any monetary 'justice' seems pretty hard to imagine.

@bcglorf
@Yogi is correct.
the US refused to provide evidence that bin laden was responsible for 9/11.

your counter with the 90's interpol has nothing to do with his statement.

they are two separate instances which have nothing to do with each other.

the reason why the US refused to provide any evidence that bin laden was responsible for 9/11 was because he wasnt.

the best that the state department could produce was a possible monetary contribution.

I don't think they'll let the U.S. default now, nor do I think they will not raise the debt ceiling (But, again, who knows?). If they do, however, raise the ceiling, it will be another indication that there is no more capping the debt, it will grow and grow until the country has no choice but to default.

Interesting to remember, back at the beginning of the Reagan years, fiscal conservatives were "crying" about the debt being $1 trillion. That's nothing compared to what it is today. And it was Reagan (by way of his "Reaganomics") who decided that there was no problem with increasing the debt.
Writes Murray Rothbard (in 1981), in an article about how the U.S. should just default on the debt:

"Perhaps the most absurd argument of Reaganomists was that we should not worry about growing public debt because it is being matched on the federal balance sheet by an expansion of public 'assets'."

(I wonder what he would make of today's $16 trillion+ in U.S. debt?)

Predictably, as soon as Reagan went on a spending spree, fiscal "conservatives" stopped being so (not unlike the 'leftists' who stopped being anti-war as soon as Obama was elected).

It should also serve us to remember that it was the Democratic party that first considered itself the party of fiscal responsibility, at least with regards to Jefferson, Jackson, and Van Buren who all had a conscious plan to defund government but eventually failed for various historical reasons.

"It is for all these reasons that the Jeffersonians and Jacksonians (who, contrary to the myths of historians, were extraordinarily knowledgeable in economic and monetary theory) hated and reviled the public debt. Indeed, the national debt was paid off twice in American history, the first time by Thomas Jefferson and the second, and undoubtedly the last time, by Andrew Jackson."

So newtboy....Your points kinna lost on me and you seem to think that there's some kind of idiot disease keeping Texas from offering you the peace-of-mind of being surrounded by people with similar "progressive" ideas? Hell man, the entire countrys' full of imbeciles who haven't a clue how the system works to enslave (you apparently are in this group WITH ALL OF US!!) EVERYONE...

uhhh, New York and Chicago are full of out-of-touch kool-aid drinkers if you want the opinion of someone who distrusts any and all governments, any and all monetary systems, etc etc you see where this is going???

California: biggest flake-fest on the planet, lived there would never go back to do so again. Colorado, Oregon, Washington State, Arkansas....Lived a lotta places and always come back to Texas-

You are wrong about the greener grass elsewhere, and Texas has plenty of highway, covered in Ladybird Johnson's neurosis for having married a cock-sucking murderer.

Now-You have issues obviously with Christianity as well,maybe you should check yer shit because3 that very last sentence of yours?? This one:
"and Texas is not one of those places if you aren't a right wing Christian."

Well sir, that's simply untrue and fucking retarded. You have a childish bias shaped like a corn-cob in some hidden place in need of extrication perhaps??

I'm not arguing that Slavery wasn't a key factor in the growth of the US economy up to a point. It was a major component of our history and evolution even outside of economic terms.

However since we were not one of the wealthiest countries in the world once slavery ended or anytime soon there after, I don't know that you can attribute the success after WW2 to slavery directly. Our having so much of the worlds wealth after WW2 had as much to do with how much everyone else LOST as it did with how much we HAD (and how much we made off of their loss because we were not slowed economically by war).

Sure you can say we weren't poised to take advantage of a post-WW2 world without slavery but the same can be said about many things including: Territory purchases, agricultural and technological advancements, organized banking, FDIC insured banking, a centralized monetary system, removal of the gold standard, social and political shifts in the world...you get the idea.

In fact some could make the argument that indentured servitude could be given a lot of credit for our early growth as well, which had nothing to do with African Slavery. And also provides evidence that even in the absence of full fledged slavery, the early colonials would have found a way to exploit cheap labor to accomplish their goals and they would not need a native or african population to do so.