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Ross Ulbricht Sentenced to Life in Prison

nytimes.com

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Re: Ross Ulbricht Sentenced to Life in Prison

#111

Post by baddox »

omgitstom wrote: post #95
tshaddox wrote: post #36

> Judge Forrest told Mr. Urlbricht that “what you did in connection with Silk Road was terribly destructive to our social fabric.” That's one of the most ridiculous claims I have seen in a while.

If it did, they should be able to prove it with some data. SR shut down in 2013, did they see a cliff of less ODs / deaths in hospitals? But yea, I believe it is ridiculous as well, but the court needed to voice their opinion with the sentence.

If you want data about damage to society, just look at basically any statistic related to the war on drugs.

Re: Ross Ulbricht Sentenced to Life in Prison

#112

Post by murbard2 »

JanSolo wrote: post #42

Perhaps if he had made even a token effort to not permit illegal sales on SilkRoad he'd be hailed as the new Jeff Bezos. Instead, he'll be denounced as a drug peddling fraudster. A shame; I thought his ideas had merit.

No, he'd have been a shitty competitor to eBay no one would have ever heard of. Illegality is/was the whole point.

Re: Ross Ulbricht Sentenced to Life in Prison

#113

Post by fat0wl »

Nadya wrote: post #40
smhenderson wrote: post #13

That seems way too harsh to me. I have strong opinions on the US War on Drugs and it's failure to meaningful deal with drug use/abuse in the USA. And I feel even worse about how it's spilling out into the rest of the world as we go "global" with everything. I can't say I know every detail of the case but I don't recall anyone getting killed or even hurt by Mr. Ulbricht so in my mind the punishment does not fit the cr…

See: Portugal Instead of imprisoning for drug usage - provide treatment and rehab. It's cheaper and has better results. One could argue culture differences in drug usage, but that looks like an attempt to "knock it before you try it". That's without going into how broken the US prison system is! See: privately owned prisons that require a quota to be filled [0]. [0] http://www.inthepublicinterest.org/article/criminal…

There is a huge legal difference between getting caught doing drugs vs facilitating the trafficking of mass quantities of controlled substances. I don't think casual marijuana smokers should get all up in arms like "hey man they are just going after everybody now!", do they offer the same support to heroin cartels?

Even if you're against the war on drugs I don't think you should really take it as a personal slight when someone operating on this scale gets arrested. Unless you really 100% believe that distribution of heavy narcotics doesn't damage society.

Re: Ross Ulbricht Sentenced to Life in Prison

#114

Post by Nadya »

serve_yay wrote: post #11

> But prosecutors, in their memo, argued that praising Silk Road for “harm reduction measures” was “akin to applauding a heroin dealer for handing out a clean needle with every dime bag: The point is that he has no business dealing drugs in the first place.” Lovely.

Mistaking some delusional world of zero crime doesn't do any good for people living in reality. That 'moral dealer' who hands out clean needles would be doing good. I guess the moral high-ground is ignoring the number of users who die or contract diseases from dirty needles? That's a pretty fucked perspective.

I see an issue with treating drug users (esp. recreational drug users) as somehow "less than human" because of their choices. If a heroin user dies or contracts disease from using a dirty needle, that is a sad thing and I would applaud a dealer who hands out clean needles to his clients to prevent it. Regardless of my stance on drugs and drug users.

Re: Ross Ulbricht Sentenced to Life in Prison

#115

Post by vectorpush »

The fact that he explicitly paid for the murder and torture of former employees and their roommates is enough for me to feel like life in prison is fair. Yes, an actual murder is a worse outcome than a murder-for-hire that never materialized, but if you're a rich and sophisticated drug-kingpin attempting to commission torture and murder to secure your criminal enterprise, the punishment should be the most severe. Murder is always a heinous crime, but in my view, it is more heinous to direct an organization that systematically orchestrates torture and murder for profit.

Re: Ross Ulbricht Sentenced to Life in Prison

#116

Post by murbard2 »

dragonwriter wrote: post #25
javert wrote: post #12

Gross miscarriage of justice. People have a right to buy drugs. Every single government actor involved in this case is far more guilty than Ross and, frankly, they are the ones that deserve prison. Yes, Ross should have realized you can't massively break the law and get away with it. He made a big mistake. But the mistake he made was assuming that other people were more benevolent than they really are. This young man…

> Gross miscarriage of justice. People have a right to buy drugs. Legally, they do not. If you have a problem with that, take it up with (relevant to the federal laws at issue here) the Congress.

That's very unlikely to work, now what?

Re: Ross Ulbricht Sentenced to Life in Prison

#117

Post by icelancer »

sudioStudio64 wrote: post #91

The thing that you need to take from this is the state re-asserting its primacy in the face of an incredibly disruptive* technology. I think that even if Ulbricht hadn't attempted to have people murdered the penalty would have been extreme. When challenged bureaucracy over compensates...through that lens the governments actions in several areas is explainable if not just. * I'm sorry for using the word "disruptive".

> I'm sorry for using the word "disruptive".

I have the same amount of guilt you do when I use that word. But in this case I think it was probably the best word. Annoying when normal words get reclassed into buzzwords.

Re: Ross Ulbricht Sentenced to Life in Prison

#118

Post by eropple »

javert wrote: post #45
wvenable wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People have a right to buy drugs. Actually they don't, which is kind of the point.

Yes, they do, you just don't understand rights. Rights are the things that we would all agree should be legally protected if we were all rational about it. So they're a human construct, but they're still objective.

Isn't it funny how the people who appeal to rationalism are the ones who happen to not manage it themselves? I mean, I'm not saying I'm rational, but I'm also not fronting about it.

What "rational", of course, usually means, is "agreeing with me", and so there are so very many false Scotsmen in attendance.

Re: Ross Ulbricht Sentenced to Life in Prison

#119

Post by jkestner »

civilian wrote: post #58
wvenable wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People have a right to buy drugs. Actually they don't, which is kind of the point.

We're discussing rights given to us by the Laws of Nature, as understood by our founding fathers, not the meager rights dolled out by the federal government.

> our foundering fathers

Accurate slip of the keyboard, given the eroding Constitution.

Re: Ross Ulbricht Sentenced to Life in Prison

#120

Post by thornofmight »

Cantremeber wrote: post #57
drcode wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have to understand that the "murder for hire" evidence was introduced as part of the trial (at which point Ross' lawyer could have disputed it, but didn't) so it could be used as part of the sentencing decision... and that kind of takes the luster off of the "non-violent crime" argument.

Plus, it happened multiple times. Even if no one was actually killed the guy still tried to have multiple people killed.

The person Ross hired as a hitman was an undercover agent who had been befriending Ross online for over a year.
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