> The government can't have it both ways. Either the server is owned by Ulbrecht and they violated his rights, or the server is now owned by Ulbrecht, and thus they can't prove he is the DPR.

It's not that simple. The courts follow procedures for these things: the courts respond to claims made by various parties, and if there is no claim that the evidence is dirty, or if the claim that the evidence is dirty is not proved for whatever reason (even silly technical reasons), then the evidence is admitted.

Don't forget that this is only one court. Higher courts could find the judge's ruling incorrect.

I started to read Alderman v. US after Forrest said that 4th Amendment rights cannot be vicariously asserted. I'm a little unclear on how this works. Could an investigator warrentlessly burgle the residences of two conspirators A & B, and use evidence found in B's place against A and evidence found in A's place against B, all without violating the fourth amendment? How about email accounts? If so, why don't investigations against known conspirators proceed this way all the time?

Seems like it should be possible for the defense to argue that the prosecution must stipulate that the server was his property, in which case his rights were violated, or that the prosecution must stipulate that it was not his property and that they have no case against him. What is wrong with this argument in a legal sense?

What you bring up may be an issue for a post-conviction appeal, as a guilty verdict would be a finding that the servers were controlled by him, which dictates that he had a privacy interest in them. But that would be after he's convicted and buried under the jail.

I think the argument is that the information found on the server shows that Ulbrecht was running this. It'd be like if I was using eBay to sell drugs. I don't own eBay, so I couldn't claim my 4th ammendment rights were violated by a search on eBay.

I don't understand how this isn't an illegal search irregardless though (maybe the server hosts gave the FBI permissin? I'm not aware of the specifics)

I don't mean to be rude but that's just some backseat lawyering here. That's not how this works at all.