Bitcoin Forum

Would Ross Ulbright be facing jail time if he didn't charge ANY fees at all?

Let's say he operated Silk Road as a free service and probably "unmonitored" with a disclaimer that he is not liable for what goes on.

So would he be still facing jail time?

I do not think that Uncle Sam would have left him go, if that was the case still.

So my guess is yes, he would.

Its a good point since right now they have him on profiting from illegal activity indirectly.  Im thinking he would be facing jail time though the fact is everything is illegal if the people in power decide it is.  A central authority cannot follow a moral code as well as decentralized distributed authority.

Well, that is a complicated subject there.
If he was to get jail time if he done things as you mention above then the guys developing Open Bazaar would be in a difficult position too, dont you think?

I do not think he would have gotten jail time if that was the case.
 

Unfortunately he would have, whether he made money or not would probably be irrelevent.
He's an accessory to drugs & arms + whatever else dealing.
It's a real shame as he didn't handle any of the goods himself but the law is the law.
He should have got out quicker when he'd earned a certain amount of capital.
The law is a bastard, rapists, pedophiles & murderers can get shorter jail terms than what he'll end up with.  

He made it in an illegal manner, whether he put in some disclaimer that whatever comes in, the users need to deal with it on their own...

Just think of those who bought from him, if he consists of the data of such people, then what will happen to the ones who bought from him...

No, I think the only reason he was prosecuted was because he profited from the buying and selling of drugs.

Greed.
It doesn't matter how much they get, they always want more.
And the more they get, the cockier they get.

Doesn't that remind you of someone?
You know, these people we see on TV all the time,
They lie, steal, raise wars, what they called?
Oh yeah, that's it: The government and Politicians!
 ;)

No, because he was still facilitating the sale of drugs. I'm sure he would have got a lighter sentence if he operated a freemarket and at least then could have stood by his libertarian principles and not looked like a phony hypocrite. I think he was obviously motivated by greed or the power he had went to his head.

I got a better "what if". What if Ross decided to relocate to a more favorable country after he made his first million instead of running it from inside the jaws of the lion? Would SR still be in operation today?  What if he duplicated his servers over five continents and relocated himself every six months? Would it ever be possible to catch him (not that running a major drug distribution network using the free wifi at a San Francisco public library wasn't a good idea too)? lol

Amercia must stick it's nose in EVERYTHING.. yes he would be.

This is actually a very interesting question and I only wish this is what he had done. If he had set it up as some sort of free ad place or maybe took fees and donated them to charity I'm sure the judge would be much more lenient, but I still think they'd prosecute the owners if caught because you're still facilitating the sale of illegal items. It's interesting though if someone just set up a free market on the dark web and let people sell whatever they want then is that the owners fault if people list illegal items? I think it's going to be interesting to see how these decentralized markets end up working and how LE act to try take them down.

That was probably his biggest mistake.
Then comes all the other mistakes he did.

However, do you think any other country would be better though?
I mean the Silk Road was an international black market,
so I can't think of any country that wouldn't take action against it.

Of course they would.
After all he was running his black market operation from within the U.S.

I doubt they'd find him in Somalia, central Columbia, Cuba, Hong Kong, Croatia, Kazakhstan, Western Sahara, Bhutan or many other places worldwide. Can you think of a country that would be worse than the USA? I'd rather be rich in a shithole like Somalia with my own private army than ass raped in a U.S. Prison.

Exactly. I'd really love to see how they'd tackle a person who was holed up in a country where the US wasn't on good terms with and had no extradition process. People running these darknet markets need to be so paranoid with their security and double check everything to make sure they're covered because it's always silly mistakes that get them caught. If they used all the precautions and didn't screw up I believe they could operate these sites without getting caught or at the very least avoid getting arrested and shipped back to the us for a trial. Even if your site gets taken down if you're in the middle of nowhere when the site goes down you'll hopefully be safe.

Good point! Now what if he simply had made a decentralized market and left it alone like Satoshi abandoned Bitcoin? Would he be responsible for every drug that is traded there?

Funny you mention this because the first version of the bitcoin client even had unused traces of code for running a trading site. Pretty amazing actually.

Well we'll soon see what happens to decentralized markets soon enough as there's a few of them being worked on right now as we speak. They'll probably run similar to torrents but over tor. With no central authority and everyone just running the program there's nothing they could really do about it. Exciting times but hopefully it'll make them change their archaic drug laws so we wont need to do this sort of thing just to buy drugs.

He would, just managing such site is punishable by law

By managing the site, Ulbright would be an accomplice in drug dealing as he both allows it to happen on his own site and knows that illegal activity is occuring. Thus, he would still get jail time, but probably less than he will get now.

In that case he would still be permitting an illegal trasaction, but who knows what would had happened

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_230_of_the_Communications_Decency_Act

AFAIK, Craigslist charges prostitutes in jurisdictions where prostitution is illegal, to post in Erotic Services. And narcotics are freely traded on Craigslist without posting fees. And any number of other victimless and victimful/actual crimes are committed on Craigslist.

I look forward to the victimless "criminal" Craig Newmark spending the rest of his life in prison also in violation of Sec 230. Oh wait, Craigslist only accepts fiat, so he's immune, unlike that filthy libertarian bitcoin bastard, Ross Ulbricht.

I believe while he is under the country law they would have found a number of charges for him, if not the same as he currently has. Got me thinking what if he ran the site as normal from international waters on a nice boat away from their laws would he face jail, now that would be one to look into if you wanted to be kingpin. The horrible thing he must be thinking in his cell is he could have walked with millions and just gave the site to someone he trusted like the number 1 seller for all the time he was there and cut a deal ya know. Alls well that ends well, now he has nothing except a friend in prison named big bob.

That is exactly why I am asking.
If he didn't profit from Silk Road at all, and made it clear that it is a free service that one should use at their own risk and responsibility, then what were they going to charge him with?

That's interesting, I haven't heard of that before.
Do you have any links to that?
The code maybe?

When you say unused, you mean that the client was coded with an in-build trading site but was never used?
Why?

I think you missed the part where I said he would have it unmonitored with a disclaimer that he is not liable for anything traded there.
So, basically he does not accept responsibility and everybody that trades there should accept responsibility for their actions.

It seems to me that many members seem to skip the part where I wrote: the site is unmonitored and a disclaimer is there that Ross takes no responsibility.

Is that true about Craigslist?
Is there really "illegal" listings?
And if there are, why is he not facing charges as well?

Well of course he would lol :o At least I guess so , he is operating and managing website that sells drugs and weapons etc ... that's against the law , beside i would like to know , they seized all his Bitcoins ? or he was able to keep some hidden ? brain wallet or whatever

I don't know if my posts are invisible to some members, but here it goes again:


Consider this: A deep web website or even bulleting board that is free and open for everyone to use and is completely unmonitored.
That means that IF you choose to trade there you take responsibility for YOUR OWN ACTIONS.

He still could be charged since he arranged a murder order
That said as an operator of a drug site he would have been charged commission or not.