Do you also feel the same way about ideas from Peter Sunde, Kevin Mitnick, Shawn Fanning and the like?

Dismissing ideas because of the origin rather than the content doesn't seem very open minded.

You left Alan Turing off that list

Kevin Mitnick is not like the others.

Martha Stewart got done for felony tax evasion, I still read her recipes from time to time.

People typically don't consider white collar crimes to be a big deal. (Drug trafficking isn't normally white collar, but in Ulbricht's case it was pretty white collar. Uber, but for drugs?)

> but in Ulbricht's case it was pretty white collar

Ross tried, on multiple occasions, to hire hitmen to kill people he didn't like. I think once you get into wetworks, it no longer counts as "white collar".

Thank goodness he didn't actually succeed.

Really, he was convicted of that? Because to the best of my knowledge all those charges were dropped. https://www.dailydot.com/crime/silk-road-murder-charges-ross...

He was not convicted, but it's pretty plain to see that he did it.

Fortunately, the people he hired for the assassinations were really just scam artists who conned him out of some money. The prosecution decided that it would not be worth it for the state to pursue murder charges in such an unprecedented scenario.

On the other hand, the assassination attempt was taken into account by the judge for sentencing.

> He was not convicted

> the assassination attempt was taken into account by the judge for sentencing

There are a whole slew of problems advocating for the ability for judges to sentence people for crimes they were never convicted of.

I don't think a life sentence was appropriate, but I don't think you're concern here is really what happened.

judges have some discretion when it comes to which end of the minimum/maximum end of the scale to sentence someone convicted of a particular crime, and using facts entered into evidence and never contested when exercising that is pretty standard.

The murder-for-hire schemes were predicates to his conspiracy charge, not just innuendo.

There's a distinction between allegation (and even conviction/settlement) and fact. On a case this high profile and with such high stakes there's plenty of motivation for spurious allegations. That they didn't follow through is telling

They did not follow through because he failed to actually hire a hitman. He got scammed instead, which ironically saved him.

I encourage you to read the transcript in which he attempts to arrange the assassinations [1]. It is pretty obvious what he is doing.

To go back to the original point, though, I do not believe that his crimes make his ideas about social networks irrelevant.

[1] https://www.wired.com/2015/02/read-transcript-silk-roads-bos...

> They did not follow through because he failed to actually hire a hitman.

Not sure why that isn't a crime, but I stand corrected. Thanks for responding with legitimate criticism instead of just downvoting

what’s telling about it? they got what they wanted with an easier case... that doesn’t absolve him of other crimes, it happens all the time

My point was that it shouldn't have been harder. Prosecute everything so that if one charge doesn't lead to conviction, another will. And given the money needed to catch him, the legal expense would have been justified. According to a sibling reply, the hitman was actually a scammer. Not a lawyer, but it seems like they could have easily tried him for attempted murder.

Unless you are purporting to have psychic powers, it seems difficult for you to know he did it outside of conviction.

Ulbricht was not a drug kingpin himself, but rather he created a marketplace for drug kingpins, right?

Also it may be beneficial to judge a person's technical capabilities separate from that person's ethics--both good and shitty people have cool tech ideas.

> Not sure why a convicted felon away for life gets any credibility in the tech community.

Because the fact that he is a convicted felon or the duration of his sentence have nothing to do with his technical skill or ability? (Aside from the fact that his failure in opsec lead to his arrest and incarceration.) Just because someone is punished for doing something bad doesn't mean they suddenly stop having good ideas.

Another way to look at it, if you were in a room with Ross Ulbricht and he was telling you to not touch a wire because while you're standing in a puddle because the wire is electrified are you going to ignore him because he's a convict?

Think of the most terrible thing you've ever done, the thing you tell no one. Do you think that other people should instantly discount all your good ideas if they found out about the terrible thing that you've done?

The US Federal Government allowed Perdue Pharma to ravage the US with a corrupt OxyContin prescription system?

Sure he was a drug dealer, but if you’re that holier-than-thou the attitude should extend to the whole pharmaceutical industry who are just drug dealers in white coats a lot of the time.

It's similar to when Hans Reiser murdered his wife. Bloodlust was similar, the minor difference is that Ulbricht was too stupid to verify the deed was done.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2131449

> Because he was a programmer, contributing to Linux, people on /. and elsewhere wanted him to not be guilty. They identified with him on some level. As the evidence started to mount against him, it made people look for crazy ways in which he could not be guilty.

Ulbricht's supporters see themselves in him. Each one of them fears the idea of being imprisoned for murder. Therefore, seeing Ulbricht as extension of themselves, they want him to get away with murder.

I believe in rehabilitation and forgiveness because bearing a grudge weighs on me, not on the begrudged party. There’s already too much negativity in the world for me to want to add more. Plus he’s in prison for cutting into the TLA drug monopoly more than for anything he actually did imo

opinion noted.

If you Google "silk road screenshots" the first image is one showing "Cocaine" as a category. Users didn't create categories; admins of the site did. Kind of blows away plausible deniability.

I don't think anyone is suggesting that he was unaware that silk road was being used for drug sales. I think the dispute is whether a person who ran such a website can still have interesting ideas to share.

I was speaking only to one point:

> Yes, many in these parts think he was just "running a website"

I think they meant "many in these parts think he was just running a website which enabled drugs to be sold" vs the accusation that he hired hitmen or was running a drug cartel.