Ross Ulbricht got 2xLife+40 for a Harmless Website

[Karl]

On Mon, Jun 28, 2021, 10:12 PM David Barrett <dbarrett at expensify.com> wrote:

> On Sun, Jun 27, 2021 at 6:08 PM Karl <gmkarl at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> My understanding is the crime is *attempting* to have someone killed,
>>> whether or not it's carried out.  Everything seems to suggest he felt Blake
>>> Krokoff was a real person, and wanted him killed, and was offering payment
>>> to do so.  Thankfully whoever "Blake Krokoff" actually is did a good job
>>> covering his tracks, but there's no reason to think that Ulbricht didn't
>>> genuinely want him dead.
>>>
>>
>> ... except that ulbricht was sentenced to longer than life, and his site
>> would have had to have been compromised to find him, so it's highly
>> possible the evidence was planted by whoever didn't like him.
>>
>
> Well yes, this is what we have courts for: to investigate this.  And
> unless you feel he had an incompetent lawyer, that's the job of his counsel
> to defend him.
>
> I'm just saying that the chat log was evidence that he made a genuine
> attempt to hire a killer to murder someone he believed he knew the identity
> of.  However, if you are willing to basically throw out all evidence you
> are suspicious of *without evidence it's fake*, then you can sorta believe
> anything.  But clearly you aren't advocating that our court system just
> consult your personal judgement on what is valid evidence?
>

I'm sure the court reviewed evidence to the extent that lawyers pushed it
to.

One of my friends had her dog stolen by an ex.  She actually took the ex to
court, and in court the ex testified that the dog had always been hers.
The case failed, and the thief kept the dog.

Courts aren't perfect.  But something is up when somebody is serving longer
than life for nonviolent crimes.  Nobody dies from asking to hire a killer.

I don't give weight to circumstantial evidence in political conflicts.
Charge people for the reason you're hunting them so everybody can know
what's going on.

But honestly I know little about the ulbricht case.  I have stronger
opinions in things I know about.


To be clear here, the person in prison did not sell narcotics, right?  They
>>>> provided a platform for general trade, where others sold narcotics.
>>>>
>>>
>>> He profited from them by taking a transaction fee, so yes, he was
>>> selling narcotics in every legal, moral, and semantic sense.
>>>
>>
>> That's not the meaning of "selling" in an online anonymous marketplace,
>> to me.  You have different experience?
>>
>
> I think it's pretty common to say "Amazon sells stuff", in the same way
> that "Silk Road sells stuff".  If Amazon started selling hard narcotics,
> and Jeff Bezos had a chat log of trying to solicit the assassination of
> someone, surely you wouldn't come to his defense?  Regardless, this sounds
> like a
>

Amazon is practically a monopoly.  Jeff Bezos needs to be kept in line
because with that amount of money you can buy ten times the lawyers
prosecuting you, to defend you.

semantic debate.  From a legal perspective, do you agree that online stores
> do in fact sell things, and are liable for the products they sell?  If
> nothing else: the fact that Ulbricht
>

If Ulbricht had made silk road open source and decentralised, we would
never have never had this conversation.

was arrested for the sale of hard narcotics on his website *should be proof
> he was liable*, tautologically so.
>
> (Fun fact: did you know that grocery stores just rent out shelf space to
> vendors, the physical equivalent of Amazon / Silk Road?  So even in the
> physical world, stores are just marketplaces for a wide variety of vendors
> to sell products side by side on the shelf.)
>

You can actually buy illegal stuff on Amazon.  The key is to get it
delivered before the seller is shut down.

Amazon was given an opportunity to implement policies in its software, to
keep itself out of prison.  Keeps everyone able to get their groceries.


I find it frustrating that you seem wholly willing to defend the theory of
> our government, but then completely disregard every practical
> implementation of that theory.  You cannot seriously believe that justice
> would be better served if we had a process that applied your nonexistent
> level of rigor to evidence gathering and legal proceedings.
>

We're just bantering, man.  I've seen posts here in support of ulbricht,
and silk road and cryptocurrency helped people talk about things that were
hard to discuss before them.  I'm creatively looking for ways to make
points, just as you appear to be doing as well.

A democracy is defined by being in flux.  It is incredibly important that
we disagree with it, so we can figure out how to change it.


> -david
>
>>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: text/html
Size: 8505 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <https://lists.cpunks.org/pipermail/cypherpunks/attachments/20210629/249d15ec/attachment.txt>