im sure after hearing this quote you'll realize you're wrong but still wont admit it:



im curious why you're relying on just what im telling you about how the site was operated, instead of doing some research. are you going to now claim that selling of "prescription" drugs or "opiods" or "ecstacy" can be explained away?

in any case im not arguing anything, im telling you what the DA successfully argued, based on evidence they collected from the website and presented in court.

read up:

https://caselaw.findlaw.com/court/us-2nd-circuit/1862572.html

undercover agents got a hold of credentials of a moderator for the site and used it to obtain incriminating evidence that moderators were not only involved with drug sellers directly, but also were dealing in fraudulent materials behind the scenes in exchange for bitcoin. as well as stealing bitcoin from users and liquidating it for themselves.

like i said the whole case is built on rock solid criminal behavior by the site's owners. the only smoking gun left was who DPR was. thats it. the govt said it was Rich, Rich wasnt given a chance to disprove this really, and was left with the bag of criminal behavior with a rock solid paper trail.

Cannibis has been perfectly legal in many forms since before 2011, and the category could include things like water pipes which are legal as well, and were at the time. Further, unless you can prove cross-state sales, Pot itself was recreationally legal and could be purchased and sold in Colorado by 2012.

Ecstasy, again, can refer to anything from MDMA to a bunch of clothing lines and other such related products. Again, not illegal. MDMA illegal? Sure, in many countries. But again, international marketplace, many sales it was almost certainly legal in those jurisdictions.

Intoxicants aren't illegal period. At least, not in the US, which is what you seem to care about for this topic.

Opiods are also not all illegal or controlled. There are cough syrups with opioids that any adult can go down and buy without prescription. Further, again, there are delivery methods for opioids that're legal for anyone to own, as well as the standard merchandise, clothing, etc. calling for the end to prohibition, etc.

Do we need to continue here? Your stance is very narrow, and comes across as more than a little ignorant.

As far as "moderators" doing bad things? Sure. Charge each individual for their individual crimes. What Ross was convicted of was the combined criminal activities of every person in his marketplace, when he committed no crime. And you say "Owners". No, not "owners". The OWNER did not buy or sell drugs. And who the fuck is "Rich"? His name is Ross William Ulbricht.

There's an argument to be made over responsibility, coordination and liability.
If you operate a marketplace and people sell drugs on it, are you aware, are you complicit, how involved are you? When its the primary purpose of an exchange and done with the obvious knowledge of its operators and facilitators, and they are profiting from it- then complicity exists in any system of law that isn't taking the absolutist view that an operator can never be held accountable for the conduct on their platform. There is an obvious parallel to social media. If someone operated a facebook/twitter/reddit style website and it kept getting child porn posted on it, and the moderators obvious knew it and instead of cracking down and stopping it they knowingly facilitated the sale of child porn and profited from it- are they accountable? Pretty hard to find a legal venue where they aren't. But how about if their website was being misused and their good faith efforts to staunch the tide weren't fully effective. How about if they were absentee landlords, who turned on the site and forgot about it and had no knowledge?
Ulbricht did not toe some grey area of the law to try to stay on the technically legal side of things, he was blatant about managing a drug empire and profiting from it and hoped to get away with it through obfuscation and cryptosecurity and he left enough breadcrumbs for investigators to identify him. They didn't require the kind of advanced tracking tech I've worked with like text sample pattern recognition or matching interaction timing, they just saw him use one of his old non-secure usernames for email and googled it up.

I think you could simultaneously say that Ulbricht was guilty as hell and that his sentence was absurdly draconian, that he deserved to be imprisoned but also deserved a pardon

its always nice when someone sends red flags of unreasonable stances so clearly. you're just being obtuse while also being uninformed. its pretty comical that you have this hard of an ability to admit you're wrong lol. i keep presenting you with facts you didnt know beforehand and then you just either ignore them or excuse them or worse strawman.

i literally told you the RICO aspect was bs and he got railroaded, but here's a list of real crimes he's liable for. you're the ignorant one who said all he did was host an open air unmoderated market, i presented a list of other illegal things he did which led me to the belief he is guilty of those and got over charged, you just bull rushed through. its odd. this take is 100% correct, especially the conclusion:

And if he was truly guilty of being the greatest drug dealer of all time, he was just pardoned by a teetotaler.

You are looking for reasons why he was somehow guilty of a 2 lifetime plus 40 year crime. I pointed out the reasons that's absurd.

He's free, and did more time for no direct crime committed than many violent criminals.

Tell me, how convinced were you that Rittenhouse was guilty?

This post was edited by InsaneBobb on Jan 24 2025 08:02am

I'm explicitly not lol, i told you 10 replies ago i think he should have paid fines with no jailtime. i see why you've been arguing so many strawmans now, you had the whole thing incorrect.

i said at the time rittenhouse was innocent and the trial proved that very conclusively. he was an idiot to be where he was imo, id skin my kid alive if they volunteered to guard cars for a sleezy pair of indian brothers in a city we dont even live in. but he was not guilty of any crime.

Judge Amit Mehta has spitefully ordered that all the people Trump commuted rather than pardoned are banned from entering Washington DC or interacting with lawmakers, Trump, etc at the capitol. Guess it shows why full pardons are needed when the crusade was against the first amendment itself

You know, I'd like to show the Goomshill on Jan 7th 2021 this post. I wonder what he would think about it.

Madness. That's what all this is. And PaRD users on Jan 7th 2021 would see it that way.

Void takes Democrats very seriously when they are probably just joking.

The whole (D) campaign was a complete joke so you could be right after all