6 ms·

Sorry, how did he cause several deaths?

Tomte 8y ago
You can look up the articles and the HN commentary yourself. In short: he supplied drugs to people who then died of those drugs. (Long version: he ran a platform where people sold the victims drugs, from which sales he financially profited). Victims who subsequently died. I assume you think that they would have overdosed from other peoples' drugs anyway, but as I wrote, I don't accept that, so we can probably not discuss this productively.
- wilsonnb3 8y ago
  > (Long version: he ran a platform where people sold the victims drugs, from which sales he financially profited). Victims who subsequently died. It's a stretch to say that he caused their deaths because a third party willingly sold them drugs on his platform that they then willingly ingested. He was involved in their deaths, yes, but he did not cause them.
  - Tomte 8y ago
    Generally, you're legally a cause of something if it couldn't have happened without your action. That others contributed, as well, doesn't absolve you. (Otherwise the sellers would claim, that the marketplace is the real culpit, and they just sold some stuff) There are certain limits to it, so that totally far-flung causations don't count, but this is not a close call.
    - flyingfences 8y ago
      > if it couldn't have happened without your action People have been buying and OD'ing on opiates for centuries. They could easily have happened without SR.
      - Tomte 8y ago
        Again, the law doesn't care about "could". As it shouldn't. How would you ever convict a thief if "someone else could have stolen it, had the defendant not been there first" was a valid defense? You need to look at the concrete situation and in that situation the drugs came via Silk Road.
        joefourier 8y ago
        The thief analogy does not exactly hold. A better one would be having the thief steal an item by threatening the victim with a pocket knife bought an Amazon. Are the manufacturers of the pocket knife guilty? Is Amazon guilty as well? Although since dying of a drug overdose does not (directly) harm third parties, it's closer to trying to convict the manufacturers/sellers of rope for cases of suicide by hanging.
        zaroth 8y ago
        There are some drugs which can kill you which only certain people can legally sell. There are some drugs which can kill you which no one can legally sell. There are millions of non-drug items someone can sell you which can kill you. So I think it has nothing to do with whether people died from items sold on the marketplace, but rather that the marketplace as a whole was de facto illegal. Contrast to OpenBazaar.
        benchaney 8y ago
        > you’re legally a cause of something if it couldn't have happened without your action. > Again, the law doesn't care about "could". Which is it?
    - logfromblammo 8y ago
      That argument only holds if he provided the only marketplace where it was possible to buy contraband drugs. Every single customer could then and can still withdraw cash at an ATM, and then visit down the chain of "guy that knows a guy" until their non-narc bona fides are established, and the psuedoanonymous cash-for-drugs transaction occurs. He's in prison for life because the War on Drugs principals needed to set up an example as deterrent, because their usual methods of investigation and interdiction were less effective at fighting obfuscated online services, and his was the most popular at the time. The judges went along with it, because they balanced the interests of the government against one guy who is almost definitely a sleazebag, and found that turning the negative PR from the apparent untouchability of Silk Road users into a win by shutting down the system, seizing the Bitcoin, and railroading the operator was fine. Even if they got reversed a few years later, after it was mostly out of the news, that was still an acceptable result. The claim that he tried to hire a hitman for contract murder definitely put a thumb on that balancing test. Without it, you're just tossing someone in prison for starting up a better Craigslist. From what I know about the case, the prosecution was probably more influenced by politics than justice. If he were market-making for insider trading tips and discreet temporary matchmaking services, instead of drugs, stolen property, prostitution, and murders, he'd still be in business and richer than Croesus. They nailed him with a pseudo-plausible argument and a pressing need to get online black markets out of the mainstream news. It's the same reason Pirate Bay keeps losing domain names, while lesser-known trackers never seem to get the same level of opposition. The first rule of your online black market is to not talk about your online black market. If it gets too popular, it becomes the enforcement target pour encourager les autres. There's no way in Hell he'd merit a life sentence without the attempted murder claims. Silk Road wasn't intrinsically more criminal than Visa or Mastercard payment clearing services, aside from it not automatically banning merchant accounts suspected of engaging in certain lines of business that are illegal in most jurisdictions. Silk Road was making the War on Drugs actors look like chumps, so they made Dread Pirate Roberts their public enemy number one. I don't think he deserves the sentence that he got, but I also don't think they're ever going to let him out, because he's back in the news the instant they turn him loose. It'd be nice to believe that the justice system was more about the justice than the system, but I just can't.
    - zaroth 8y ago
      They could have bought the drugs which killed them anywhere. Ulbrich didn’t even sell the drugs. But he knowingly fostered the sale of controlled substances, which itself is a crime.
  - bdcravens 8y ago
    If you drive a "getaway" car in a crime where a death occurred, by most state laws, you will be charged with murder.
    - aetherson 8y ago
      Felony murder is a broadly shitty law that has tons of terrible consequences. But even so, the idea that it extends to drug dealers whose customers have ODs is absurd.
    - ska 8y ago
      Not a great example, because that is law very specifically written to get around this (which many consider a bad law for that reason, if not others). In other words, without the very specific felony murder legislation(s), your getaway car driver would not be accountable for the murder for the very reasons quoted here.
- jknightco 8y ago
  This is absurd. Does Walgreens "cause death" every time someone ODs on Tylenol? Or your local Ford dealer when someone gets in a car accident? Smoking killed 6.6X the number of people drugs did in 2017—do you think we should start arresting everyone who owns a 7/11?
  - bdcravens 8y ago
    To carry forth the analogy, if I sell a handgun to a known felon, and they kill someone, did I "cause death"? Presumably illegal substances are illegal in part based on risk, so even participating in the transaction you're assuming that risk.
    - beaner 8y ago
      You're talking about selling things that enable violent crimes against others, while the person you're responding to is taking about selling benign things with which one can only harm oneself. They seem categorically different.
      - bdcravens 8y ago
        I sell a gun to someone who has expressed to me interest in self harm. They commit suicide. Did I "cause death"?
        michaelmrose 8y ago
        You would be complicit fault is infinitely divisible.
        gnode 8y ago
        Does fault need to divide, or can it apply severally?
        beaner 8y ago
        The distinction is tools of force vs other.
- ska 8y ago
  If you are interested in constructive discussion, it really doesn't help to just change commonly understood terminology without calling it out explicitly. The selling of drugs is considered a non-violent crime, regardless of how you feel about it. It is of course an eminently reasonable thing to contend that some non-violent crime can have as much or more on the lives on its victims than violent crime. That's a different conversation though, than "we should change the classification of this act".
- Forbo 8y ago
  How many lives did he save by directing people away from violent street level dealers?
- gammateam 8y ago
  What definition of supply are we using in this context? Sorry I'm not familiar with the intricacies of English colloquialisms and the divergent nuances of how those colloquialisms are used in the various parallel legal systems in the United States. Also, what distinction do other market places use to avoid any prosecution, a terms of use agreement?
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

You can look up the articles and the HN commentary yourself. In short: he supplied drugs to people who then died of those drugs. (Long version: he ran a platform where people sold the victims drugs, from which sales he financially profited). Victims who subsequently died. I assume you think that they would have overdosed from other peoples' drugs anyway, but as I wrote, I don't accept that, so we can probably not discuss this productively.

wilsonnb3 8y ago
> (Long version: he ran a platform where people sold the victims drugs, from which sales he financially profited). Victims who subsequently died. It's a stretch to say that he caused their deaths because a third party willingly sold them drugs on his platform that they then willingly ingested. He was involved in their deaths, yes, but he did not cause them.
- Tomte 8y ago
  Generally, you're legally a cause of something if it couldn't have happened without your action. That others contributed, as well, doesn't absolve you. (Otherwise the sellers would claim, that the marketplace is the real culpit, and they just sold some stuff) There are certain limits to it, so that totally far-flung causations don't count, but this is not a close call.
  - flyingfences 8y ago
    > if it couldn't have happened without your action People have been buying and OD'ing on opiates for centuries. They could easily have happened without SR.
    - Tomte 8y ago
      Again, the law doesn't care about "could". As it shouldn't. How would you ever convict a thief if "someone else could have stolen it, had the defendant not been there first" was a valid defense? You need to look at the concrete situation and in that situation the drugs came via Silk Road.
      - joefourier 8y ago
        The thief analogy does not exactly hold. A better one would be having the thief steal an item by threatening the victim with a pocket knife bought an Amazon. Are the manufacturers of the pocket knife guilty? Is Amazon guilty as well? Although since dying of a drug overdose does not (directly) harm third parties, it's closer to trying to convict the manufacturers/sellers of rope for cases of suicide by hanging.
        zaroth 8y ago
        There are some drugs which can kill you which only certain people can legally sell. There are some drugs which can kill you which no one can legally sell. There are millions of non-drug items someone can sell you which can kill you. So I think it has nothing to do with whether people died from items sold on the marketplace, but rather that the marketplace as a whole was de facto illegal. Contrast to OpenBazaar.
      - benchaney 8y ago
        > you’re legally a cause of something if it couldn't have happened without your action. > Again, the law doesn't care about "could". Which is it?
  - logfromblammo 8y ago
    That argument only holds if he provided the only marketplace where it was possible to buy contraband drugs. Every single customer could then and can still withdraw cash at an ATM, and then visit down the chain of "guy that knows a guy" until their non-narc bona fides are established, and the psuedoanonymous cash-for-drugs transaction occurs. He's in prison for life because the War on Drugs principals needed to set up an example as deterrent, because their usual methods of investigation and interdiction were less effective at fighting obfuscated online services, and his was the most popular at the time. The judges went along with it, because they balanced the interests of the government against one guy who is almost definitely a sleazebag, and found that turning the negative PR from the apparent untouchability of Silk Road users into a win by shutting down the system, seizing the Bitcoin, and railroading the operator was fine. Even if they got reversed a few years later, after it was mostly out of the news, that was still an acceptable result. The claim that he tried to hire a hitman for contract murder definitely put a thumb on that balancing test. Without it, you're just tossing someone in prison for starting up a better Craigslist. From what I know about the case, the prosecution was probably more influenced by politics than justice. If he were market-making for insider trading tips and discreet temporary matchmaking services, instead of drugs, stolen property, prostitution, and murders, he'd still be in business and richer than Croesus. They nailed him with a pseudo-plausible argument and a pressing need to get online black markets out of the mainstream news. It's the same reason Pirate Bay keeps losing domain names, while lesser-known trackers never seem to get the same level of opposition. The first rule of your online black market is to not talk about your online black market. If it gets too popular, it becomes the enforcement target pour encourager les autres. There's no way in Hell he'd merit a life sentence without the attempted murder claims. Silk Road wasn't intrinsically more criminal than Visa or Mastercard payment clearing services, aside from it not automatically banning merchant accounts suspected of engaging in certain lines of business that are illegal in most jurisdictions. Silk Road was making the War on Drugs actors look like chumps, so they made Dread Pirate Roberts their public enemy number one. I don't think he deserves the sentence that he got, but I also don't think they're ever going to let him out, because he's back in the news the instant they turn him loose. It'd be nice to believe that the justice system was more about the justice than the system, but I just can't.
  - zaroth 8y ago
    They could have bought the drugs which killed them anywhere. Ulbrich didn’t even sell the drugs. But he knowingly fostered the sale of controlled substances, which itself is a crime.
- bdcravens 8y ago
  If you drive a "getaway" car in a crime where a death occurred, by most state laws, you will be charged with murder.
  - aetherson 8y ago
    Felony murder is a broadly shitty law that has tons of terrible consequences. But even so, the idea that it extends to drug dealers whose customers have ODs is absurd.
  - ska 8y ago
    Not a great example, because that is law very specifically written to get around this (which many consider a bad law for that reason, if not others). In other words, without the very specific felony murder legislation(s), your getaway car driver would not be accountable for the murder for the very reasons quoted here.
jknightco 8y ago
This is absurd. Does Walgreens "cause death" every time someone ODs on Tylenol? Or your local Ford dealer when someone gets in a car accident? Smoking killed 6.6X the number of people drugs did in 2017—do you think we should start arresting everyone who owns a 7/11?
- bdcravens 8y ago
  To carry forth the analogy, if I sell a handgun to a known felon, and they kill someone, did I "cause death"? Presumably illegal substances are illegal in part based on risk, so even participating in the transaction you're assuming that risk.
  - beaner 8y ago
    You're talking about selling things that enable violent crimes against others, while the person you're responding to is taking about selling benign things with which one can only harm oneself. They seem categorically different.
    - bdcravens 8y ago
      I sell a gun to someone who has expressed to me interest in self harm. They commit suicide. Did I "cause death"?
      - michaelmrose 8y ago
        You would be complicit fault is infinitely divisible.
        gnode 8y ago
        Does fault need to divide, or can it apply severally?
      - beaner 8y ago
        The distinction is tools of force vs other.
ska 8y ago
If you are interested in constructive discussion, it really doesn't help to just change commonly understood terminology without calling it out explicitly. The selling of drugs is considered a non-violent crime, regardless of how you feel about it. It is of course an eminently reasonable thing to contend that some non-violent crime can have as much or more on the lives on its victims than violent crime. That's a different conversation though, than "we should change the classification of this act".
Forbo 8y ago
How many lives did he save by directing people away from violent street level dealers?
gammateam 8y ago
What definition of supply are we using in this context? Sorry I'm not familiar with the intricacies of English colloquialisms and the divergent nuances of how those colloquialisms are used in the various parallel legal systems in the United States. Also, what distinction do other market places use to avoid any prosecution, a terms of use agreement?

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]