I’ve thought the punishment of Ross was extremely too harsh: life in prison without the possibility of parole. I know the government paints this picture of him as a major drug smuggler, but I think we in the tech world are smarter than that and realize creating a platform is different than selling. After all, are EBay and Amazon liable for all the counterfeit things on their page? Should Bezos go to jail?
I also think the Silk Road story would be a fascinating 2-season, 20 episode series on Netflix. Read the story linked below for a great 2 hour read.
Wired did an awful job at covering the case. Total sensationalism. That link you sent is a 6-year-old hit-piece. Nothing more.
This case generated sensationalism and media like Wired and ArsTechnica ran with it, at the expense of a young man awaiting trial. They destroyed his public image and relayed false and inaccurate information. It's sad to see people still sharing those superficial and sensationalized articles years after.
You should check this. Based on 400+ references, incl. investigation reports and more never-before-seen docs. The real story is SO much more interesting & mind-blowing than Ross being that one guy running the site the whole time.
You’re being downvoted for disagreeing when GP says “Ars and Wired are garbage media, you should instead trust this post _from Ross’s own website_ as the truth”. Come on HN
Of course, it isn't objective, and you can't resent the operator of that site for that. freeross is operated by his close family, including his mother.
Except Amazon doesn't have a category called "Counterfeit Beats Headphones". Silk Road had categories for items that were explicitly illegal; those categories were created by site administrators. The "just a marketplace" argument doesn't really pass the test; SR was complicit. I can't open a flea market with a section called "Cocaine" and claim innocence when merchants actually sell Cocaine.
However, I agree his punishment is excessive; a 20-40 years sentence with possibility of parole would seem appropriate.
A document on his computer saying that he paid a supposed hitman and they ran with the cash, and chatlogs of him talking to the hitman, and an "immutable public ledger" with a record of the payment whose time and amount matches up with the note on the laptop are all ridiculous government smears. And there's nothing at all sociopathic about lying to your parents all the way until their bankruptcy in asserting your innocence.
> After all, are [...] Amazon liable for all the counterfeit things on their page? Should Bezos go to jail?
Yes. Amazon is fucking up the functioning of the overall market, by undercutting legal products with fraudulent fake products, while shielding the criminals from retribution. It's been extremely harmful and Bezos should be punished for it.
Seems like you also think that Mark Zuckerberg runs my FB profile? IMHO that is a very unproductive way of thought. Also (on top of absence of practical correctness) most likely formally incorrect, but I'm not a English native speaker. Definitely would be invalid in my language though.
Amazon mingles inventory and delivers counterfeit goods on behalf of legitimate sellers. Your Facebook analogy is broken because Facebook is a completely different industry with completely different operations but to fix it, imagine if Facebook mixed up your posts with content written by spammers and served it to your friends under your name. Then you could say that Zuckerberg is in fact running your profile and ruining the social ecosystem by essentially laundering crime to lower his costs.
I also think the Silk Road story would be a fascinating 2-season, 20 episode series on Netflix. Read the story linked below for a great 2 hour read.
- https://www.wired.com/2015/04/silk-road-1/