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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

#371

Post by MichaelGG »

drcode wrote: post #55
jjcm wrote: post #24

It's interesting. On one hand, if a leader of a traditional drug distribution network landed a life in prison sentence, I wouldn't have thought twice about it. With Silkroad though, I'm actually convinced by the defendants argument: that it provided safer, more trustworthy drugs to users. I've had friends who've died from purchasing bad drugs at raves from people who were looking to make money and run. In one situati…

Though I agree with you about the "safer drugs" argument, Ross' site was the worst possible thing that could happen to the supporters of safe, anonymous marketplaces- The evidence that he was willing to use brutal mob-style violence to support his business has yet to be disputed by anyone in a credible way.

His mistake was shitty opsec - he should not have allowed any third parties into a position where they could extort him. However, after the fact, if you're facing someone threatening to imprison and destroy the lives of many vendors and patients, then what is the lesser evil? The extortionist choose to attempt to endanger people. You can't use the state. What other ethical choice is there?

I'm not saying this is the case for Ross, but it's a possibility, at least for one of the contracts. Using violence to protect innocents is not something bad. It's just unfortunate he created the situation in the first place - instead of an extortionist, he may have confided in a LEO, thus hurting his users. (Which is apparently what happened.)

Anyways, the big lesson is that when your startup has major security requirements, go slow and don't break things. There's no real reason he shouldn't be retired now, enjoying his life while enhancing others. Just technical incompetence.

Re: Ross Ulbricht Sentenced to Life in Prison

#372

Post by dragonwriter »

civilian wrote: post #255
harryh wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course he is. But I think the idea of natural rights is dumb. They're made up by humans. They're enforced by humans. Their exact nature is disagreed upon and debated by humans. The idea that there is some set of core natural rights that comes from somewhere other than humans is a tactic used to avoid debate on which rights we should and should not have by people unwilling to actually support their ideas with facts…

Of course I am :) but natural rights have formed the basis of most modern (english revolution and forward-- american, french, russian) revolutions. Those citizens didn't care for what was _legal_ or _illegal_, they cared for their welfare and rights, even though it was essentially illegal. Webcomic for the choir: http://www.asofterworld.com/index.php?id=469 If humans followed the law above all else, then we would not…

> but natural rights have formed the basis of most modern (english revolution and forward-- american, french, russian) revolutions.

The idea of particular divine ordinances -- which is what doctrines of natural rights are -- are fine ways to organize identity and action around that identity, including revolution.

That that is true doesn't, in any way, make any particular such quasi-religious concept correct. And, even if it did, I can't think of any of those revolutions that included, in their conception of natural rights, a right to buy drugs, as such. So, even operating in such a framework (and even once we've agreed which framework of natural rights we are operating in), you probably have more work to do than just simply asserting it to establish the claim "people have a right to buy drugs" is valid even within that framework.

> If humans followed the law above all else, then we would not have democracy, or even republics.

Yes, most people would agree that there are principals beyond the law that justify arguments about what the law should or should not be, and most would probably even agree that some of those principals are sufficient to justify breaking the law as it stands -- and even to justify soliciting homicides if they are threatened sufficiently.

However, that kind of high-level agreement itself is very different than agreeing that the "right to buy drugs" is in either the first or, more relevant to the claim that the Ulbricht verdict is a miscarriage of justice, the second class of principals.

Re: Ross Ulbricht Sentenced to Life in Prison

#373

Post by dragonwriter »

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.

> Rights are the things that we would all agree should be legally protected if we were all rational about it.

There are lots of definitions of "rational", and I don't think that explanation actually works (or even makes sense) for any of the obvious ones.

Re: Ross Ulbricht Sentenced to Life in Prison

#374

Post by cjensen »

Cushman wrote: post #301
cjensen wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since you specifically requested my argument... I'd agree that lawbreaking is a reasonable moral choice, but not in this case. Moral lawbreaking, in my view, is done when there is a clear benefit or reason to the lawbreaking. And by clear I mean clear to a reasonable and moral person, and not just a speculative personal opinion. Given that frame of reference, I would argue that (1) the notion that online drug dealing…

So then, you don't believe that harm reduction doesn't justify illegal activity, you just think what Silk Road specifically did doesn't qualify as "harm reduction"? That's fine; I disagree, but I'm not interested in litigating it here. But your original parent actually was arguing along those lines, cf. "rat poison" et cetera, so perhaps you'd like to retroactively not reject that as "not a reasonable argument".

In the original, "not a reasonable argument" was specific to this instance. I try to avoid generalizations as one can almost always manage to find a corner case exception.

Re: Ross Ulbricht Sentenced to Life in Prison

#375

Post by dragonwriter »

murbard2 wrote: post #355
dragonwriter wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

And you've made a bald statement equivocating between the morality of legality of something. Would you like a list of examples where extremely illegal actions are clearly and controversially moral, or can you think of historical examples yourself?

> And you've made a bald statement equivocating between the morality of legality of something.

No, I haven't. "Equivocating" is, you know, pretty exactly the opposite of "expressly disambiguating".

> Would you like a list of examples where extremely illegal actions are clearly and controversially moral

Presuming you mean "clearly and uncontroversially", no.

Though if you are arguing that "the right to buy drugs" is in that category, I'd like to see an argument for that.

Re: Ross Ulbricht Sentenced to Life in Prison

#376

Post by gknoy »

themeek wrote: post #354
GreenCarnation wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nope. Entrapment requires the police to have caused someone to commit a crime they wouldn't have otherwise. A good explanation of what counts as entrapment: http://thecriminallawyer.tumblr.com/post/19810672629/12-i-wa...

I'm not sure I really follow because the comics didn't describe anything that presumably would be entrapment. Is anyone here a lawyer in this area of law? I don't really trust webcomics.... But let's talk about this alleged hitman situation. Didn't the police come up with the idea and create the situation where a third of a million dollars appeared to have been stolen and a volunteer appeared to defect with informati…

  > Is anyone here a lawyer in this area of law? I don't really trust webcomics....
I think you can trust this one. The author of the webcomic is a lawyer [0]:

" Yes. I went to Georgetown Law, where I was an editor of the American Criminal Law Review. I started out defending juveniles in D.C., then was a prosecutor with the Manhattan D.A.’s office for about 9.5 years, first in the Special Narcotics office and then in the Rackets bureau. I’ve been doing mostly criminal defense since then, both white-collar and street crime, federal and state. "

0: http://lawcomic.net/guide/?page_id=7

Re: Ross Ulbricht Sentenced to Life in Prison

#377

Post by srdev »

copsarebastards wrote: post #167
icelancer wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He allegedly hired someone to kill multiple people, by the way. http://www.wired.com/2015/02/read-transcript-silk-roads-boss... I agree with you that drug trafficking is way overprosecuted, but...

Hey everybody, icelander hired someone to kill multiple people. Hey icelander, now you, too have allegedly hired someone to kill multiple people.

Do you have a journal proven beyond a reasonable doubt to have been written by icelancer that includes them discussing how they paid to have a person killed? And did you also confirm that the payment for that supposed hit was transferred? Because these facts were shown at Ross's trial. Its alleged because he hasn't yet been specifically convicted on these charges, which are still pending in Maryland.

Re: Ross Ulbricht Sentenced to Life in Prison

#378

Post by snogglethorpe »

Nadya wrote: post #206
aaron-lebo wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And some people may agree with you but it really has nothing to do with what Ulbricht was doing.

Please read the parent I responded to. Especially the closing statement. >If drugs were legal and treatment of abuse the focus instead of punishment Silk Road wouldn't have existed in the first place. I cited Portgual, a country where drugs are legal and the focus is on treatment of users. Giving an example of where such a system exists and works. The "war on drugs" is the wrong approach. I implied, rather indirectly…

Maybe the best long-term policy is drug decriminalization and treatment (etc), and maybe were that already the case, Ulbricht would not have been tempted into doing anything bad.

Nonetheless, that has no bearing on this case. Once somebody is dabbling in murder, they need to go down, because they are clearly not somebody we want in society. That they were "tempted" into it by potential profits enabled by misguided prohibitions is irrelevant.

So yeah, decriminalize drugs, focus on treatment, etc. Maybe that will make the future of our society brighter. But Ulbricht belongs behind bars.

Re: Ross Ulbricht Sentenced to Life in Prison

#379

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

Re: Ross Ulbricht Sentenced to Life in Prison

#380

Post by zxyzzxxx »

gwern wrote: post #369
zxyzzxxx wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Jurors probably aren't experts in rhetoric so such statements have a huge influence on them.

The jury wasn't involved; juries convict, judges sentence.

I was assuming the sentence was spoken during the trial.
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