This is the key point. He is going to spend the rest of his life in prison, pretty much, for running a website. Not for hurting anyone, not for even threatening to kill anyone - those charges weren't a part of his conviction - but simply by enabling the exchange of drugs he apparently should be locked away forever.
Even the most ardent proponent of full legalization usually acknowledges that many drugs are very harmful--they just believe the people should be free to do things even if they are harmful to themselves.
I generally support decriminalization or even legalization, but I would be reluctant to allow internet sales. I'd require sales to be through licensed dealers and in person, so that an addict cannot completely cut themselves off from human contact. Internet sales make drugs too easy.
Licensed & regulated dealers (aka pharmacies) would be great.
In regards to the harm from drugs-- I'd add the obvious point that prohibition comes with a really high cost.
I recently did dry-january and I was really happy with the results of cutting back on my drinking. I wake up more rested, and had more energy in the evenings. I've been thinking that going totally dry might be a good thing to do in my life.
But would I make alcohol, one of the top killers in america, illegal? (ref: http://www.cdc.gov/alcohol/fact-sheets/alcohol-use.htm ) Absolutely not. If you went to US high school you know why--- alcohol-dealing gangs took over. People turned to bad products (wood alcohol, that potentially included methanol) to get their alcohol fix. I imagine we needlessly jailed a lot of alcohol drinkers and pushers.
> Why does the general public consider drug prohibition to be that much different than alcohol prohibition??
Because they have been told by the media, over and over, for decades. At least that's my theory. Consider how often the phrase "drugs and alcohol" is used in the general context of substance-based addiction.
Because it is socially accepted. Being a connoisseur of fine wines or whiskey is something many people consider sophisticated. Being a connoisseur of, say psychedelics or stimulants is, apparently a criminal offense.
My theory is that the media tells people what they want to hear, in order to sell the most papers, page impressions etc. If they told stuff that the general public disagreed with, then they would probably lose readers/viewers.
Alcohol has a long tradition in the western civilization, so people feel somewhat comfortable with that. Other drugs probably seem very new and scary to the average guy.
My theory is that the media tells people what they want to hear, in order to sell the most papers, page impressions etc. If they told stuff that the general public disagreed with, then they would probably lose readers/viewers.
There is a feedback cycle, where the media both manipulates and responds to public opinion.
Not sure why people and especially lawmakers keep separating alcohol and other drugs. Alcohol is a drug and one of the more dangerous and addictive ones at that. If that is legal than so should a lot of other drugs be. And trying to make it illegal, as you say does not work; it makes it things worse.
> Why does the general public consider drug prohibition to be that much different than alcohol prohibition??
The average IQ of most western countries, including the US, is around 100. That's probably significantly lower than the average reader here on Hacker News. I'm not sure if a person with an IQ of 100 ever asks themselves intelligent questions like yours...
I was recently in a conversation where it was pointed out that my rather cold analytic nature when it comes to these kinds of things puts me at odds with more emotionally driven decisions. Even without agreeing, I can see the point.
That said, in my mind short of violent action, I find it hard to see how having to serve more than two decades in prison is any kind of justice for any kind of non-violent crime. I also find that seeing the U.S. prison population at near 1% is rather depressing, and that most drugs probably shouldn't be criminalized and their use are more representative of other social issues at hand.
When black markets exist to the extent that the drug trade does, it usually indicates that the law is probably wrong. A black market for anything will always exist, but when you're starting to see it affect even 1% of the population as it does in this case, that should indicate that legally, the position should change in a way that reduces the need for such markets. However, time and time again governments try to push in the other direction, the U.S. revolution from England is in a large part based on this.
IQ basically measures the speed of the brain, so it seems likely that there is some correlation between IQ and good political judgement. High IQ people basically have a greater capacity for thought.
Even as a proponent of full legalization I know that as little as a few minutes spent in water can kill someone, and often does.
Why people are allowed to casually dive into this toxic substance is beyond me. No licenses, no regulations, practically any body of water you can find you're allowed to jump into totally unsupervised.
Most places don't even have signs warning people of the danger, and worst yet, many children practice a dangerous activity called 'swimming' in this substance often daring each other as to who can drop the highest from a rope into a potentially fatal body of water.
Also, once you start drinking it you need to find at least 4 litres of this a day to keep from going into water withdrawl, commonly known as dehydration, this can happen in as little as 3 days with out your daily fix.
There's a difference in degree and in kind. Water does not create addiction that forces you to consume it in amounts that are seriously harmful to your health.
It's not true that areas unsafe for swimming are not marked - they are; moreover, there's both infrastructure in place to increase safety (e.g. lifeguards) and a significant amount of effort put towards educating people about the dangers of things like jumping into the water in a potentially unsafe place.
But that's all beside the point. Laws and rules do not exist in vacuum, and humans are not spherical cows of uniform density. Time and again history has proven that most people can handle exposure to water safely, while they can't handle being exposed to hard drugs. You can blame this on individual stupidity, but people don't have perfectly free will, and if this stupidity predictably touches big fractions of a population, it's time to mitigate it.
Also, can you please avoid drinking water for the next 4 days... I think you might be addicted, if you're not addicted you won't show any signs of withdrawl.
Addicts suffering from water withdrawl often drink amounts that are unsafe for their health which is why marathon runners have to be given water adulterated with mind altering metals like sodium and highly toxic chlorine to make it safe for them to drink.
It's kind of insane that water addiction would drive people to ingest water in such vast amounts that you'd have to add chlorine and sodium to make it safer.
If you think places unsafe for swimming are marked I would hazard a guess that you haven't spent much time in the outdoors.
> It's not true that areas unsafe for swimming are not marked - they are; moreover, there's both infrastructure in place to increase safety (e.g. lifeguards) and a significant amount of effort put towards educating people about the dangers of things like jumping into the water in a potentially unsafe place.
It's not true that products unsafe for smoking are not marked - they are; moreover, there's both infrastructure in place to increase safety (e.g. physicians and filters) and a significant amount of effort put towards educating people about the dangers of things like using tobacco in a potentially unsafe manner.
I believe that time and history has proven that prohibition solves little, where infrastructure to increase safety and effort put towards educating people results in "less harm" -- a much better outcome for all. Some people will make a harmful choice (e.g. heavy smoking, fast food diet, sedentary lifestyle, using chainsaws alone), but society as a whole should not be punished for the choices of the few.
As far as hard drugs, Ron Paul has done excellent surveys amongst hardcore Republicans (who generally say they'd do drugs if allowed) and found that most of them would not do heroin if given the choice.
> There's a difference in degree and in kind. Water does not create addiction that forces you to consume it in amounts that are seriously harmful to your health.
Neither do most drugs, especially most illegal drugs.
Many legal drugs do (the most addictive of all being nicotine), but that also doesn't matter and is besides the point.
The poster above me implied that Ulbricht's actions did not hurt anyone. Hence, harm from drugs is relevant, because Ulbricht was selling drugs.
Ulbricht was not selling water, so whether or not water is harmful is completely irrelevant to my point, which is that Ulbricht is not going to jail for "running a website".
Do you apply this logic to alcohol as well? It's a drug and there are many addicts, so similar to other drugs I don't think it should be sold online. Where do you come down on that? I only ask because many people implicitly omit alcohol when discussing drugs, even though it is one.
I'd be reluctant to allow it, just like with other drugs. As with other drugs, if it can be shown that a particular drug is not overly addicting, then I'd be fine with that drug being sold online (but only from licensed and regulated dealers, with enforced quality standards).
So, online beer would probably turn out to be OK, as would online marijuana.
Cigarettes are an interesting case. Nicotine is pretty high up on the addicting list, but experimentally even heavy smokers don't seem to consumer so much that they ruin their lives the way, say, a heroin addict might. Probably because cigarettes don't really impair your functionality. So probably they should be allowed online.
Cars and guns also hurt people but pretty much anyone can sell those.
I agree that drug sales should be regulated but that doesn't in any way make sentencing someone to life in prison for running a website any less fucked up.
> Cars and guns also hurt people but pretty much anyone can sell those.
The following applies only to the US. Since 1968 you need a license granted by the federal government to sell guns (https://www.atf.gov/firearms/qa/who-can-obtain-federal-firea...). The law allowing you to carry a firearm was passed in 1791. Driver's licenses have been around since 1899. You can't sell a car to someone without one.
When thinking about this issue, I've found the following thought experiments useful:
(1) Should someone who ran a multi-million dollar illegal gun operation get life in prison, even though unlike drugs, the right to own firearms is explicitly protected by the Constitution?
(2) Should someone who ran a multi-million dollar website selling only weed in legal venues (Colorado, etc) be convicted of any crime, never-mind sentenced to life in prison, even though it is against federal law?
Personally I answer (1) as YES and (2) as NO, and place Ulbricht's conduct significantly closer to (1) than to (2).
> Driver's licenses have been around since 1899. You can't sell a car to someone without one.
You most certainly can. And it's completely legal. Driver's licenses have nothing to do with buying and selling vehicles. Some (all?) dealers might not do it, but there's other reasons besides legality for them to worry about.
Interesting, I stand corrected. That said, to legally carry out the act with a car that might actually hurt someone else (driving it), you need to be both licensed by the government and compliant with a suite of regulation (insurance, etc). So I think the point still stands.
How about we both draw out our positions more explicitly? I present two scenarios where someone is selling a harmful product to people-- one in which someone is selling a product that US citizens have an unassailable right to in an illegal fashion and one in which someone is selling a product that people have a weaker claim to in a legal fashion. I support jail for the former and not the latter simply because my position is that the peoples' right to have product is irrelevant, it's whether you are selling it legally or not. If you're selling someone harmful in an illegal manner and you do multi-million dollars of business per year you should go to jail for a long time, even if the people have a right to said product.
I'd greatly appreciate if you could elaborate, because I'm finding myself confused as to what you're getting at, and I have no idea which point you're addressing. I think I follow, but I'm not convinced my interpretation is correct.
Honestly, I can't tell if this block is because I'm conflating the context of the greater discussion (the Ulbricht trial) with the more nuanced points of timsally's comment.
Well, gun violence is definitely a pretty big problem in the united states. More importantly, banning or restricting gun ownership is effective at reducing gun related injury and death. The same cannot be said for drug prohibition (see: American alcohol prohibition, Portugal's drug decriminalization).
Drugs, like spoons, hurt people. Some other items that kill people include:
Cars. Motorcycles. Trees. Water. Too much air. Too little air. People. Dogs. Sticks. Bath tubs. Guns.
In the end, drugs are no more inherently harmful than any of the items listed above.
What usually kills people, however, is not drugs, but things associated with drugs that exist only because we have decided they should exist:
- Drug gangs and cartels and the violence associated with them are the product of US government policy, not drugs.
- Drug overdoses are the product of US government policy, not drugs (in most cases), because especially with illegal drugs people don't know what they're getting or how much of it or how to use it.
It is primarily we that kill people. Look around you. If you see a face that supports the drug war, that person is partially guilty in all drug related deaths.
The irony of this case is that Judge Katherine Forrest is now much more responsible for the drug-related deaths she is trying to prevent.
>Yeah, I remember reading news stories all the time about how Canadians overdose on maple syrup or how Egyptians overdose on water. Truly, all drugs are just as innocuous as air and puppies.
Do you seriously think people wouldn't OD on drugs if there were legal sources?
People ruin their lives pretty well currently with highly addictive drugs, and I don't see how increasing supply would stop that from happening.
You can be clever that sticks kill people all you want, but that's completely sidestepping why people are worried about drug legalization: many drugs have extremely well documented negative effects on people, and these effects end up affecting others as well (hence "no smoking in public places'-style laws), and it has a real cost to society (hospitalisation, and just the human cost). Last I checked Sticks aren't that costly to civilisation in recent times.
Trying to be clever with semantics won't convince anyone of anything.
> People ruin their lives pretty well currently with highly addictive drugs, and I don't see how increasing supply would stop that from happening.
I don't see how prohibition and the War on Drugs prevented them from happening too. All that was achieved by the War on Drugs was a massive waste of taxpayer money[0], the creation of a large, organised, violent and powerful criminal underground[1], filling up of prisons with non-violent offenders[2], denying treatment to millions of addicts and treating them like criminals, and the violation of the rights, freedoms and liberties of large numbers of innocent people[3].
What would you say the impact of the prohibition and the war on drugs have had on the number of people who are negatively affected by drugs? That must be considered too.
It's pretty obvious that drugs being illegal isn't stopping people from OD'ing, so I don't understand how this can be used as an argument against legalizing drugs.
I'm not arguing against legalizing drugs, I'm saying GP's argument is no good.
If you actually want to convince people on the fence (GP's comment is clearly meant only for the audience of those already convinced), it's more important to actually use convincing arguments. "Sticks hurt people" convinces no one.
Yeah, I remember reading news stories all the time about how Canadians overdose on maple syrup or how Egyptians overdose on water. Truly, all drugs are just as innocuous as air and puppies.
from the historical record I'm pretty sure that the USA gov has caused/allowed more drugs/chemicals/radiation/weapons to cause more harm/deaths to innocent/civilian people than Ross ever has. I don't see any US President or Senator, etc., in jail, because of that.
example: drop tons of Agent Orange on the lands/people of Vietnam? Just an oopsie! and they move on, wipe their hands clean. People dead and children deformed. Oopsie! Our mistake. Next meeting.
Exactly. What about "There must be no doubt that no one is above the law"? Every time I learn more about history, politics etc I'm more and more frustrated. The system/law doesn't work the way it is presented and people/institutions that are "in charge" have an incentive to left it the way it is (otherwise 50% of them should be in jail).
Any ideas what can we do? I like projects that try to give more power to the people (like DemocracyOS), but I think it's rather kind of a bugfix for a badly designed system - it's important to try to improve it to keep it somehow working in the short term, yet (IMO) the whole architecture is broken and won't work in the long term when everything changes so fast...
Give me a break. I also think the punishment was excessively harsh (the murder-for-hire stuff likely played a role even though he was not convicted on that), but saying he is getting life in prison for "running a website" is a huge oversimplification of the ruling.
That being said, I think this is the federal government showing, through the courts, how terrified they are of people running things they cannot control. Bitcoin terrifies them. They want to send a very clear message.
"As explained above, the murder-for-hire evidence is probative both as evidence of the charged offenses and to prove Ulbricht’s identity as DPR—a key disputed issue in this case. In addition, the charges in this case are extremely serious: Ulbricht is charged not with participating in a run-of-the-mill drug distribution conspiracy, but with designing and operating an online criminal enterprise of enormous scope, worldwide reach, and capacity to generate tens of millions of dollars in commissions."
Eh, the evidence for it does seem pretty damning, even accounting for the fact that Ulbricht hasn't had the opportunity to defend himself (although, given the showing at the actual trial, perhaps he's better off). I would bet that he's guilty, though not even at 2:1 odds.
That's not to say that, strictly speaking, this isn't a miscarriage of justice - it is. No one should be in prison merely for selling drugs or facilitating the sale of drugs. But, Ross Ulbricht is likely a danger to society.
The people supposedly "murdered" never existed... the names did not belong to real people, nor did the photo id's match anyone of record, etc. It's a rumor that they were Fed baiting him... and likely why the Fed never tried to charge him on the murder-for-hire counts.
Curtis Green is a real person, who really worked for Ross, who really was afraid Ross would have him killed, and who in fact Ross did try to have killed. See the very beginning of Joshuah Bearman's "The Rise and Fall of Silk Road" in Wired.
You forgot the part where he wanted Curtis Green dead because of a theft of USD$350,000.00 in Bitcoin commited by the dirty undercover DEA agent who he then hired to murder Curtis Green.
Your "because" is wrong. DPR's own words about killing Curtis: "ok, so can you change the order to execute rather than torture? ... he [Curtis] was on the inside for a while, and now that he’s been arrested, I’m afraid he’ll give up info." So, Ross himself says that the reason he wants Curtis killed is simply because Curtis might help the authorities (which Curtis did).
I wasn't aware suspecting someone of embezzling (whether or not its the proceeds of your criminal enterprise) was generally an accepted justification, or even significant factor in mitigation, for torture and murder.
What law allows killing to prevent a robbery? I think you're mistaken. Some places allow using lethal force when your own life is threatened. I am not aware of any place in the US where one is justified in killing merely to prevent a robbery.
And if there is, can you show me a law in the US where a citizen can go after a robber long after the robbery is over and then kill them?
While it's nice that Force is responsible for the theft and not Green, Ulbricht didn't know that and so can't be given any 'credit' for that mistake. He arranged for his own employee to be tortured and murdered, even if his idiocy (and only his idiocy) in choosing hitmen prevented an actual fatality from happening.
You should have stopped there. Unless you're trying to claim that Force somehow zombified Ulbricht and then mind-controlled him into placing the hit...
So you agree that Alupis' item is completely false, which was my sole point.
As an aside, you conveniently neglect to mention that Curtis Green feared Ross would have him killed simply because Curtis had been arrested and Ross knew that he might spill the beans. And since Curtis knows Ross better than you or I do, and the fact that he managed to predict that Ross would try to have him killed, brings into question whether the money really made a difference.
You can still be charged with soliticing a minor if you happen to be a star on To Catch a Predator. Just because the minor in question never existed doesn't mean it's not a crime.
I think that is also silly. If finding yourself on To Catch a Predator is soliciting a minor, then by that logic the showrunners are purposefully endangering a minor.
Is it not known as entrapment to present a false situation in order to get a conviction or indictment, even if it's to confirm on behalf of the target a tendency or willingness to participate in the activity were to be real - and illegal because of its implications for abuse and its lack of real damage?
There are a lot of misconceptions about what is or is not entrapment. A lot of things like lying about not being a cop when under cover, putting out a bait car, or just watching you commit a crime without warning you it was a crime are not entrapment and the reason why is explained in the guide.
It's only entrapment when they do something to overcome some resistance you put up to committing the crime. So unless you can show that they somehow changed your mind, the entrapment defense won't work.
Sure, the thief wouldn't have stolen the bait car if they knew it was a bait car, but the question is whether they would have stolen any car.
So in this case wasn't a crisis situation (there being a defector with SR secrets) fabricated by the police and a third of a million dollars disappeared? Would this sort of thing count as doing something to overcome resistance? It's not likely that an anonymous person offering to 'help take care of the situation' would have enticed him - he needed a scenario that compelled him and this scenario was fabricated.
It's hard to see how being blackmailed regarding the details of one's illegal activity could count as entrapment for murder.
It seems to me that DPR came up with murder as the 'solution' to this problem, even if we claim that the problem itself was entirely manufactured.
Entrapment defenses are only supposed to prevent innocent people from being coerced by police into committing a new crime, not to provide a get out of jail free card to criminals who were somehow fooled by the police.
So the real question is not whether the police gave him a reason to hire a hitman, it's whether he ever would have hired an assassin at all.
I'm not sure I really follow because the comics didn't describe anything that presumably would be entrapment.
Is anyone here a lawyer in this area of law? I don't really trust webcomics....
But let's talk about this alleged hitman situation. Didn't the police come up with the idea and create the situation where a third of a million dollars appeared to have been stolen and a volunteer appeared to defect with information and a threat to bring down the organization?
What exactly does count as coercion? If the police were to make your incentives work out a certain way - let's say they were aware that a non-call-girl was in dire straights was potentially willing to accept money for a personal night, they freeze her bank account and provide a good looking and safe opportunity with a load of cash to do it - would that count as compulsion?
Or is it just by appeal to words that counts as compulsion?
How can a court decide what you would have done otherwise?
It seems like a pretty difficult area of law - and one that the defendant could argue?
For the record I do not support trafficking of drugs and illegal materials, nor calling of hit men: but I do want to make sure that the tools to get a conviction do not further enshrine precedents that have fascistic qualities to them - e.g. parallel construction, entrapment, others.
IANAL, but from reading lots of the law comic (which is by an actual lawyer), the basic answer is that the state has to have 'corrupted' them into being a criminal here.
The police are allowed to give you the idea (you are required to refuse), they're allowed to give you the means (they can sell you the gun/drugs/etc.), they're allowed to create opportunities (bait cars), they're even allowed to become a part of the conspiracy with you and to lie to you about it (undercover agents).
What they're not allowed to do is to force your hand or corrupt someone who wasn't committing crimes to start.
So it's not going to count if the only reason they would have otherwise refused to commit the crime was because they were dealing with the cops and it's not going to count if the reasons they decided to commit the crime stem from their own wrongdoing. If you want to protect yourself from someone blackmailing you over criminal acts you've done, you turn yourself into the police. You don't hire a hitman and add yet another crime to the list.
> Is anyone here a lawyer in this area of law? I don't really trust webcomics....
I think you can trust this one. The author of the webcomic is a lawyer [0]:
"
Yes. I went to Georgetown Law, where I was an editor of the American Criminal Law Review. I started out defending juveniles in D.C., then was a prosecutor with the Manhattan D.A.’s office for about 9.5 years, first in the Special Narcotics office and then in the Rackets bureau. I’ve been doing mostly criminal defense since then, both white-collar and street crime, federal and state.
"
Go Team 'Murica....