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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

#341

Post by psykovsky »

mpyne wrote: post #333
psykovsky wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You forgot the part where he wanted Curtis Green dead because of a theft of USD$350,000.00 in Bitcoin commited by the dirty undercover DEA agent who he then hired to murder Curtis Green.

While it's nice that Force is responsible for the theft and not Green, Ulbricht didn't know that and so can't be given any 'credit' for that mistake. He arranged for his own employee to be tortured and murdered, even if his idiocy (and only his idiocy) in choosing hitmen prevented an actual fatality from happening.

He wanted Curtis Green dead because of Force, not despite.

Re: Ross Ulbricht Sentenced to Life in Prison

#342

Post by pkinsky »

itistoday2 wrote: post #317
tzs wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you implying drugs don't hurt anyone? Even the most ardent proponent of full legalization usually acknowledges that many drugs are very harmful--they just believe the people should be free to do things even if they are harmful to themselves. I generally support decriminalization or even legalization, but I would be reluctant to allow internet sales. I'd require sales to be through licensed dealers and in person,…

> Are you implying drugs don't hurt anyone? Drugs, like spoons, hurt people. Some other items that kill people include: Cars. Motorcycles. Trees. Water. Too much air. Too little air. People. Dogs. Sticks. Bath tubs. Guns. In the end, drugs are no more inherently harmful than any of the items listed above. What usually kills people, however, is not drugs, but things associated with drugs that exist only because we hav…

>Yeah, I remember reading news stories all the time about how Canadians overdose on maple syrup or how Egyptians overdose on water. Truly, all drugs are just as innocuous as air and puppies.

Maple syrup may not have been a good example http://www.diabetes.org/diabetes-basics/statistics

Re: Ross Ulbricht Sentenced to Life in Prison

#343

Post by mpyne »

psykovsky wrote: post #341
mpyne wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While it's nice that Force is responsible for the theft and not Green, Ulbricht didn't know that and so can't be given any 'credit' for that mistake. He arranged for his own employee to be tortured and murdered, even if his idiocy (and only his idiocy) in choosing hitmen prevented an actual fatality from happening.

He wanted Curtis Green dead because of Force, not despite.

> He wanted Curtis Green dead

You should have stopped there. Unless you're trying to claim that Force somehow zombified Ulbricht and then mind-controlled him into placing the hit...

Re: Ross Ulbricht Sentenced to Life in Prison

#344

Post by pakled_engineer »

pera wrote: post #314
pakled_engineer wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would say that theory would only stand if you lived in Russia, were politically connected, never left Russian territories, and never allowed any sales to CIS/Russian territories. Note the part about being politically connected because the Russian militsia (or w/e they are called these days) will simply be tipped off by the FBI to your whereabouts and go shake you down for hefty taxes. Even if two countries official…

I don't see how your location could be relevant here: you are not selling/shipping products from your home, you are only operating an online marketplace. To make things easier: you aren't even making any profit from it, you are just doing it because you support the idea of a drug market or whatever, so there is no laundering.

It's still conspiracy to traffic narcotics and nobody in their right mind would do so without taking the money since life in prison is likely. Risk must equal reward, and I wouldn't trust any software to protect you from a nation state set on shutting you down. You need the protection of another nation state.

Re: Ross Ulbricht Sentenced to Life in Prison

#345

Post by dragonwriter »

murbard2 wrote: post #230
dragonwriter wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That's very unlikely to work, now what? Try harder, like by working to convince the public that such a right should exist, so that other people join you in your effort to convince Congress to change the law.

Also very unlikely to work unless you happen to be extremely talented at this and spend your life doing it. And even then, it could take decades.

Yes, radically changing everyone's idea about what rights should exist is hard.

Of course, you haven't provided any argument here for your position on rights, just a bald statement that the right you would like to exist does, as if that were some kind of uncontroversial, universally-accepted thing that required no justification.

Re: Ross Ulbricht Sentenced to Life in Prison

#346

Post by homulilly »

tzs wrote: post #285
zanny wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the key point. He is going to spend the rest of his life in prison, pretty much, for running a website. Not for hurting anyone, not for even threatening to kill anyone - those charges weren't a part of his conviction - but simply by enabling the exchange of drugs he apparently should be locked away forever. Go Team 'Murica....

Are you implying drugs don't hurt anyone? Even the most ardent proponent of full legalization usually acknowledges that many drugs are very harmful--they just believe the people should be free to do things even if they are harmful to themselves. I generally support decriminalization or even legalization, but I would be reluctant to allow internet sales. I'd require sales to be through licensed dealers and in person,…

Cars and guns also hurt people but pretty much anyone can sell those.

I agree that drug sales should be regulated but that doesn't in any way make sentencing someone to life in prison for running a website any less fucked up.

Re: Ross Ulbricht Sentenced to Life in Prison

#347

Post by tptacek »

MadrugadaEterna wrote: post #282
tptacek wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is simply not true. Not only was the evidence introduced at trial, but it was tied to a specific charge, and considered at length by the court. https://s3.amazonaws.com/s3.documentcloud.org/documents/1391...

Actually it is true. No charge for murder. ArsTechnicha and wired agree.

Practically every filing from the case is trivially available with a single Google search, so I'm not really at all interested in how Ars or Wired chose to summarize it.

Re: Ross Ulbricht Sentenced to Life in Prison

#348

Post by fleitz »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #323
fleitz wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No more than water does. Even as a proponent of full legalization I know that as little as a few minutes spent in water can kill someone, and often does. Why people are allowed to casually dive into this toxic substance is beyond me. No licenses, no regulations, practically any body of water you can find you're allowed to jump into totally unsupervised. Most places don't even have signs warning people of the danger,…

There's a difference in degree and in kind. Water does not create addiction that forces you to consume it in amounts that are seriously harmful to your health. It's not true that areas unsafe for swimming are not marked - they are; moreover, there's both infrastructure in place to increase safety (e.g. lifeguards) and a significant amount of effort put towards educating people about the dangers of things like jumping…

As far as hard drugs, Ron Paul has done excellent surveys amongst hardcore Republicans (who generally say they'd do drugs if allowed) and found that most of them would not do heroin if given the choice.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T9n4nwxgaQg

Re: Ross Ulbricht Sentenced to Life in Prison

#349

Post by Riseed »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #323
fleitz wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No more than water does. Even as a proponent of full legalization I know that as little as a few minutes spent in water can kill someone, and often does. Why people are allowed to casually dive into this toxic substance is beyond me. No licenses, no regulations, practically any body of water you can find you're allowed to jump into totally unsupervised. Most places don't even have signs warning people of the danger,…

There's a difference in degree and in kind. Water does not create addiction that forces you to consume it in amounts that are seriously harmful to your health. It's not true that areas unsafe for swimming are not marked - they are; moreover, there's both infrastructure in place to increase safety (e.g. lifeguards) and a significant amount of effort put towards educating people about the dangers of things like jumping…

> It's not true that areas unsafe for swimming are not marked - they are; moreover, there's both infrastructure in place to increase safety (e.g. lifeguards) and a significant amount of effort put towards educating people about the dangers of things like jumping into the water in a potentially unsafe place.

It's not true that products unsafe for smoking are not marked - they are; moreover, there's both infrastructure in place to increase safety (e.g. physicians and filters) and a significant amount of effort put towards educating people about the dangers of things like using tobacco in a potentially unsafe manner.

I believe that time and history has proven that prohibition solves little, where infrastructure to increase safety and effort put towards educating people results in "less harm" -- a much better outcome for all. Some people will make a harmful choice (e.g. heavy smoking, fast food diet, sedentary lifestyle, using chainsaws alone), but society as a whole should not be punished for the choices of the few.

Re: Ross Ulbricht Sentenced to Life in Prison

#350

Post by haberman »

rayiner wrote: post #87
haberman wrote: post #38

I don't know enough about this story to have an overall opinion, but this particular exchange made me angry: > His lawyer, Joshua L. Dratel, in submissions to the judge, argued that the website’s “harm reduction” ethos made it safer than traditional drug dealing on the street. > But prosecutors, in their memo, argued that praising Silk Road for “harm reduction measures” was “akin to applauding a heroin dealer for han…

People support keeping drugs (with the exception of marijuana) by 70-80%. Presumably they have their reasons. They vote. It's not the prosecutor's place to justify or explain the law.

See my reply here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9627467
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