Free Ross Ulbricht
freeross.org
freeross.org
And yes, he was not convicted of the solicitation for murder, but in the US justice system considering this secondary behavior is perfectly legal. I don’t even think it’s all that uncommon or unethical. It’s just the more converse of giving someone a lighter sentence for an otherwise unblemished life.
Honest question: How much profit did pharma execs make fully knowing their drugs were abused and sold illegally en masse? I'm interested in how people think they aren't culpable? Oxycodone is a household name in drug abuse, it kills thousands every year. All those people seem to live very good lives off it's sales.
Attempts to make less addictive pain killers is an uphill battle for profitablity in the existing environment.
Not defending Ross Ulbright here either, these people should be in jail too.
Out of interest, do you know if that's a fact in the Ulbricht case i.e. the judge said she was taking it into account?
I'm not sure it matters hugely in the sense that the mandatory minimum for Continuing Criminal Enterprise is life and he was well within the bounds of that. Just curious.
So considering that, yes, his punishment far exceeds his involvement in the illegal activity. The punishment should've been shared by the dozen, if not hundreds, of other parties/groups/dynamics involved. History has proved that killing the platform doesn't fix the problem.
This discussion is clouded because it's was an online platform and it was pretending to be a beacon of user privacy and civil liberties (which it was not).
Imagine a situation where you're renting rooms in your house for criminals to conduct crimes (and that's your main selling point, nobody is pretending you're renting those rooms because you want simply to help people), would we be discussing whether you deserve a harsh sentence or not? I don't think so.
The difference between the Silk Road website and Google/Postal Office is that they take reasonable measures against illegal activity on their platform when they are informed of that.
This case has often been compared to Breaking Bad, where main protagonist starts off with someone that many people can identify with, and it is only through some twisted sequences of fate that leads him to getting deeper and deeper into the criminal world. And it is only really in the last season or two where it finally sinks in that he really is the bad guy.
That's a bit disingenuous.
does not fix a serious vulnerability when reported
does not notice fbi had root access to the servers & monitoring every direct messages and transactions
pays hackers not to hack him
joins stack overflow by rossulbricht@gmail.com to ask tor-php related questions
did not hide true ip of server
But alas, Big Pharma can slang dope on every block worldwide with nary a peep.
It's almost like a death penalty (some would think even worse). Ross did facilitate bad things unintentionally and/or turned a blind eye, but he was also young and reckless.
It's time to pardon this young man so he can actually contribute positively to society and make up in other ways.
>None of the procuring murder allegations were part of Ulbricht's indictment in New York, although the evidence was factored into Ulbricht's sentence.
[...]
>On the last day of trial, Serrin Turner, the NY lead prosecutor, addressed the jury and stated that none of the six contracted murders-for-hire allegations occurred. One charge of procuring murder was originally filed in October 2013 in a separate pending indictment in Maryland (which was later dismissed in its entirety in July 2018); the other five allegations were never filed.
I don't really know enough about the American justice system to understand exactly what went on there but apparently the judgement was not solely based on the nonviolent charges?
That makes it sound like the prosecutor said that the contracts didn't occur. The way it's worded in the source Guardian article is "The prosecutor says he does not believe any of the killings have occurred."
In other words the prosecutor is contending that Ulbricht took out 6 unsuccessful contracts.
If you are determinined someone is evil, you are willing to sentence them irrationally harshly based on that. If, however, your guiding principle is, that the justice system is a tool of society to keep peace and minimize injustice (among other things) then you will come to more nuanced judgments.
There is no good and evil. These are made-up categories and super subjective. We can unmake them, i.e. make them less powerful on the political level.
Good and evil are not made up categories.
Focusing on the crimes being nonviolent seems like a poor tactic. Look at the outrage in about no one going to jail for financial malfeasance, for example.
But I have 3 particular issues with the sentence here:
1. The government has moved him twice across the country from New York to Colorado then Arizona. The Wikipedia article mentions his mother moved to Colorado to be closer to him. That seems cruel.
2. Why a high security prison that's going to put him in with actual murderers and violent offenders?
3. Life plus 40 years does seem like overkill. I mean look at the sentences for the Elizabeth Smart kidnappers by comparison.
At the end of the day though I have limited sympathy. Like what did he expect to happen?
I'm going to hazard a guess that that's fairly standard for drug kingpins which is what Ulbricht was convicted of (amongst other things).
> look at the sentences for the Elizabeth Smart kidnappers by comparison
I thought Mitchell got life without parole too, no? Ulbricht's are all concurrent so it amounts to the same sentence.