Ross Ulbricht was sentenced to life in prison last Friday. The name Ross Ulbricht probably doesn’t ring a bell to any readers unless they’re familiar with his trial. But it’s more likely that they’ll be familiar with the site the 31-year-old was convicted for founding ?and operating. Silk Road was an online marketplace for illegal goods — mostly drugs — that operated on the Tor network using an anonymous online currency known as bitcoin. It allowed for illicit trading with unprecedented security and ?convenience.
It might be helpful to think of it as an evil Amazon, or if you’re not a fan of Jeff Bezos, an eviler ?Amazon.
While the minimum sentence for the charges Ulbricht faced was 20 years, U.S. District Judge Katherine Forrest pointed out that the defendant was something of a pioneer, and thus her decision was informed by the knowledge that it would serve as a warning to criminals who might want to follow in ?Ulbricht’s footsteps.
During the trial, Ulbricht pleaded for leniency and asked the judge to give him a chance to take a different path with the rest of his life. I’m paraphrasing because the argument is vapid and insulting.
He claimed he wanted Silk Road to be an idealistic enterprise, a place that empowered people to make choices in their lives with anonymity and privacy.
Yet, he further maintained that he had no idea this kind of atmosphere would be conducive to — you know — criminals.
Fortunately, Judge Forrest disregarded this nonsense and instead sought justice for the many lives Ulbricht helped ruin during the two years Silk Road ?was online.
Silk Road was able to reach international markets, thanks in part to the worldwide hidden network on which it operated that helped keep its users’ ?identities secret.
Two of the people who testified against Ulbricht were parents of drug overdose victims who had ?overdosed on substances acquired on Silk Road. One of these victims lived in Boston, another in Australia. Somebody whose crimes had an international reach ought to be locked away from the societies he decided to wound rather ?than help.
One of the more interesting arguments floating around the Internet was that websites like Silk Road shouldn’t be illegal at all and that their digital venues help keep violence to a minimum and allow for victimless transactions.
Two damning pieces of evidence dismantle this point of view, however.
The first is that even if such a community did exist, the damage its drugs do to its customers is significant enough that society has a vested interest in ?eliminating it.
People may have a right to alter their states of consciousness, but they do not have a right to endanger their own health at the expense of others or to risk the safety of those ?around them. Narcotics and their ilk have an unseemly knack for doing precisely both of those things.
The second piece of evidence is the simple fact that such an idealized community can never exist. Human error infects every mortal project, and Silk Road was no exception.
Also keep in mind that — though it couldn’t be proved in court — circumstantial evidence strongly suggests Ulbricht hired hitmen to kill competitors, misbehaving clients ?and others.
Even if Silk Road was made with innocent intentions — and it clearly wasn’t — the free will it gave its client would, like the drugs exchanged there, ultimately come at a cost.
awurdema@indiana.edu
