Ross Ulbricht, criminal or freedom fighter?
This is the Silk road creator.
One of the witnesses at his trial stated that he firmly believed his son would be here today if it wasn't for Ross Ulbricht and Silk Road.
What a crock of shit.
High profile scapegoat, sacrificial lamb, the whole barnyard I reckon.
Yeah, never underestimate the hysteria and the ambulance chasers. I wonder did his son drive a car? did his son eat at fast food restaurants ( deaths by food poisoning?) etc etc etc. If his son could find that site on the net, pay by bitcoin and all the rest of it he was a smarter cookie than me. So he knew what he wanted. Life is what you make of it, and if no harm done to others who are you to tell whats right and wrong.
Life sentences, no parole AND they want a cut of the proceeds so a 180 mil fine also. Does seem a bit harsh at first glace, for running a website, but then as the judge mentioned a harsh sentence is needed as a deterrence. I guess we'll be seeing the dozens of alternative market sites shut down knowing how well deterrents work in the drug war.
I guess we will know when the war is over. A bottlo and chemist on every street corner. Prisons full of young fellas. Almost there!
Luckily running/building prisons is big business. Weird eh, run a pedo website and get a lesser sentence, priorities I guess, can't have people fucking with your business model....http://www.deepdotweb.com/2015/01/06/sentenced-to-25-tor-network-cp/
Freedom fighter? LOL well I don't think so but did anyone ever think this wasn't going to end in tears (maybe tattooed tears)? I wouldn't glorify this guy - I mean after all he sort to make money out of those whose lives are so miserable they need to escape it. Maybe if he used those funds to solve the problems that created the misery in the first place like tackling poverty, substandard education and so on. If he had there might be something a little more saintly about him, but he didn't. Still, life without parole seems harsh.
It is like the drug cartels in the favellas they supply an escape but they don't fix the problem, they only help propagate it. Since the drug cartels have been pushed out of the favellas in Brazil they are actually making improvements in the lives of the impoverished. You know, children can attend school and play in parks because the neighborhood is safer.
There may be some real arguments about corruption, greed, and good old conservative elitism with no compassion being a cause of much of these miseries to begin with. There might even be some good arguments for legalisation and regulation of various drugs but make no mistake the whole illicit drug industry is simply there to make money and cares nothing for anyone's freedom and only entrenches the status quo so that the have nots continue to have less and the haves, have more. How is that fighting for freedom? Nelson Mandela fought for freedom.
hem-stret wrote:Yeah, never underestimate the hysteria and the ambulance chasers. I wonder did his son drive a car? did his son eat at fast food restaurants ( deaths by food poisoning?) etc etc etc. If his son could find that site on the net, pay by bitcoin and all the rest of it he was a smarter cookie than me. So he knew what he wanted. Life is what you make of it, and if no harm done to others who are you to tell whats right and wrong.
Yeah hysteria........what's with the comparison with the creator of the silk road to driving a car or eating Maccas?!?
@ slowman -
"did anyone think this wasn't going to end in tears", yep thousands including dozens of similar sites which have run their course successfully and those still operating.
" sort to make money out of this whose lives are so miserable they need to escape it", is this your personal view of anyone who uses drugs or is it a throwaway line that you are regurgitating without really thinking about what you are saying?
"problems that created the misery in the first place like tackling poverty", if poverty is the reason people take drugs why is drug use most prevalent in 1st world, high income societies?
If you think that the use of force to push cartels out of favellas has had any impact you are mistaken, on the other hand a system of drug supply which takes force/violence out of the equation, now there's an interesting idea.
Without understanding the philosophy of the site or the philosophy of Ross Ulbricht you will never understand the implications of what these guys were trying to do. The illicit drug trade can ONLY make money in the face of prohibition, the main drivers of the site understood the shortcomings of the war on drugs and prohibition and sought to provide a platform for consenting adults to partake in free trade beyond the reach of institutions. Silk road was a community of thinkers, libertarians, philosophers and everyday people sharing a new paradigm that is so far beyond your understanding that you cough up the phlem of mainstream thinking to try to rationilise sentencing a man to the rest of his life behind bars for running a website.
@ rabs - personal choice. People make the choice to inject themselves with herion, people make the choice to drive a car, people make the choice to eat fast food, each has an inherent risk that grown adults making these decisions understand. If you die of a condition related to your diet do you have the right to pursue the fast food retailer in court and impose a life sentence? No that's a preposterous notion as is sentencing someone to life imprison for facilitating a transaction between a seller of drugs and a user who died.
So the man has been exposed and is looking at life in prison. I cant help but think his biggest crime was to take on the status quo, how dare someone provide what people want? He avoided all the chubby little fingers like our Eddie Obeid/FIFA officials taking grafts on lifes little honeytraps. Big pharma certainly doesnt want people self medicating cheaply and our law enforcement industries are as reliant on it as traffic fines. What say those living on one of the most liberal countries on the planet, with the most liberal thinkers (surfers) that walk it? There are shades of the recent death sentences in Bali, and Blowins excellent 'island' article circulating in this context.