i understand you now, you're talking about drug fronts, to which i agree. i thought you were talking about businesses where they open air sell illegal drugs advertised as a drug seller.

Those still exist on the so-called "dark web", and there are several sites that pre-date the creation of Silk Road by a couple decades. Once again, taxes are paid, and CC companies and Stripe/etc. can be contacted by the Government to track down the sellers if/when necessary. The primary reason the sites aren't shut down, again, boils down to doing so HARMING law enforcement.

99.999% of sellers and buyers from Silk Road were never charged, and remained unknown due to the lack of trackable currency, and anonymously set up bitcoin wallets. Not only did people bypass the racket, they remained anonymous while doing it. THAT is why Silk Road was targeted. All those dealers and buyers? Just went to other sites. That's it. This is part of why the government in general dislikes crypto.

correct, i dont disagree. i think our only disagreement is the amount of liability legally operators of the website have, and i contend their own terms of service pretty much cement that. they explicitly created a website for drugs to be sold on anonymously, knowing it was illegal, and Rich was the most likely candidate for DreadPirateRoberts. although since he wasnt allowed to argue it wasnt him to much effect we'll likely never know. unless his pardon gives him confidence to admit it was him. maybe he'll claim he's satoshi too.

It is not the job of a mall owner to police the businesses within the mall. That is the job of the police. For that matter, it's not even the Mall Owner's job to ever set foot in the mall they own. They have people who can collect on leases from the businesses. And it's not THOSE people's concern what kind of advertisements the businesses are posting OR what products they're selling, merely to collect the lease payments.

Once again, the liability for illegal business conducted in unmonitored marketplaces falls strictly on the buyer and seller. Nobody else. The entire scenario is one of government attempting to force business owners to provide free law enforcement services for the government. Show me where the Constitution even HINTS at such a thing? Hell, business owners trying to defend themselves and their businesses while Antifa and BLM are looting and burning everything to the ground were charged for attempting to take the law into their own hands.

No good, fren. The same reasoning you're using could be used to claim Gun Sellers are responsible for every misuse of the guns they sell.

Edit: Regarding terms of use, I can't find the actual Silk Road terms of use. Or rather, a simple google search doesn't provide it. If Google's AI is to be believed though, the ToS for Silk Road prohibited use of the site for illegal uses, but relied on the honor system regarding that term. Meaning zero enforcement. Which is the exact same premise most malls have always operated on. If law enforcement gets a conviction on a business in the mall, directly related to business conducted in that mall space? The Mall owner will kick the business out of the mall. Otherwise? Not the mall's problem.

This post was edited by InsaneBobb on Jan 23 2025 01:57pm

https://freeross.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/GX-120_Redacted_SellersGuide.pdf

Sadly you're just incorrect, the "mall owner" not only openly endorsed illegal activity, they coded in categories of illegal goods for buyers to use in listing their illegal goods, and they further gave instructions to their sellers informing them how to ship illegal items to avoid detection, all in explicit terms. you could literally select a category on posting to sell your items as "stimulants", "psychedelics", etc.

your mall analogy would be a good one if the silk road operated differently than it did as an automoderated open posting site. however it was categorized, moderated, and directed on how to illegally ship illegal substances.

This post was edited by thesnipa on Jan 23 2025 02:13pm

Stimulants are not illegal. Nor are psychedelics. SOME stimulants are illegal, as are SOME psychedelics.

You're reaching incredibly hard here. You call it "auto-moderated" but it wasn't. They had no system for such.

Once again, you're imposing your personal perspective of a responsibility that doesn't exist. Silk Road sold nothing. Silk Road bought nothing. Merchants bear the responsibility for their sales, customers bear the responsibility for their purchases. And once again, by targeting the site and it's owner, ZERO drug dealers or drug buyers were "brought to justice". Instead, the actual buyers and sellers just went to other services. Which is why it's the duty of law enforcement to target CRIMINALS, not those offering market places.

You can be as semantic as you want about how the category titles could be representing legal items, but that's just semantics. you have to convince a jury. i can explain why that's not possible in very simple terms.

i didnt say it was auto-moderated, i said IF it was auto-moderated. in fact it was actively moderated, they had support channel options that buyers used to ask website staff directly the appropriate way to list specific items. there was also moderated website support where buyers reported sellers for not delivering, improper delivery, and improperly described product. the website staff then used this and buyer feedback to revoke sellers access from users. this was all captured and the DA had it admitted as evidence in the court case.

so at the end of the day you have a website that's directly telling sellers how to list illegal items, how to ship illegal items, and taking action against sellers who are out of compliance with their direct guidelines. and you're describing them as just uninformed landlords. like i said you're just wrong, its all in publicly available documents and court cases. the only missing piece was who the operators were, not that their behavior was illegal once implicated as operators of the site.

So. What you're describing is not "moderation". It's a ticket system for inquiries and complaints. Meaning "not automated in the slightest". Now, can you prove that every ticket was acted upon? I'd suggest that since the prosecution themselves never made that case, you can't. Further, can you show evidence that all, or even the majority of illegal drug sellers on the service were reported using the ticket system?

And we already covered that the site did NOT direct sellers how to list illegal items. The fact that SOME of a category of things are illegal does not make the category illegal. Likewise with packaging and shipping.

Again, you're reaching really hard. Especially given we both appear to be on the side of "Good Pardon". Is it that you don't believe Silk Road was targeted specifically because the government wasn't getting their 30%, or...?

we didnt cover that at all, i said they did and even told sellers to message them directly for more direction (its in the seller's guide i linked). you then said basically "stimulants could be anything". now you're jumping to 100% of tickets being acted on being a requirement, which is odd. as that has zero legal bearing. if they did operate on tickets of drug sellers no providing drug products that means they were not only aware of drug sales but moderated the sale of drugs. thats called legal liability.

you can say im reaching all you want, the facts are simple, Rich's legal team only tried to prove he wasnt the owner of the site, they didnt even object that the owner whomever he/she was would be legally liable for criminal behavior. your posts read like you're a legal genius who should have represented him, because only you see an easy out everyone else missed. quite odd. you're imo making things up as you go without knowing the facts of the case (i had to link you the seller's guide and am still explaining to no avail how the site was operated), likely because u think he got screwed by the FBI. i agree he got screwed, u just keep saying things that are wrong factually. u dont need b.s. to justify thinking he got screwed, because i explained the judge's decision to now allow him to deny DreadPirateRoberts was him was unjust. what followed was a pretty fair adjudication of illegal behavior by the site's owners, the charges and sentence was just overblown and it was based on bad motivations by the federal govt, as you correctly pointed out.

We certainly did, right here:


The fact of the matter is that you're hinging your entire opinion regarding Silk Road "directing sellers on how to list illegal items" on an assumption that entire categories were illegal. Those categories were NOT illegal. Sugar is a stimulant, and perfectly legal to sell worldwide. There are thousands (millions?) of perfectly legal stimulants AND psychedelics.

Your argument hinges upon your perception that a category is, in it's entirety, "illegal" by nature. Which none of the categories were.

Most of your argument is crap. What you DO make a good point of is that Ross Ulbricht had complete garbage for a legal team.

I will repeat:


The fact of Silk Road was that by targeting Ross and shutting down Silk Road, the government accomplished NOTHING regarding drug sales or purchases. Instead, they spread merchants and customers to a wide variety of other market places, where they were more difficult to track. No, what they accomplished was making an example of someone who used Crypto to bypass taxes. And wrapped up in their actions against the person, included the seizure of over 60K bitcoin. The Fed wanted paid. They didn't give two shits less about drugs. It was all about the money.

This post was edited by InsaneBobb on Jan 23 2025 03:05pm