If I understand correctly, Ross Ulbricht created Silk Road as a general purpose online market site, similar to eBay except using Tor and Bitcoin (neither of which are illegal), and other people used it illegally. Why wasn't Ulbricht protected by Section 230?
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Under 47 U.S. Code ยง 230(e)(1),
Nothing in this section shall be construed to impair the enforcement of section 223 or 231 of this title, chapter 71 (relating to obscenity) or 110 (relating to sexual exploitation of children) of title 18, or any other Federal criminal statute.
Section 230 exists to protect site operators from civil lawsuits and overzealous state/local prosecutors (there's now also an exception for prostitution and sex trafficking, but that didn't exist back in 2013). It doesn't protect site operators from federal criminal prosecution. For that, the same rules apply to site operators as apply to everyone else. Ulbricht knew and intended Silk Road to operate as a drug trafficking site, so he was criminally liable for operating it as one.
cpast
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Ulbricht was charged with seven offences: continuing a criminal enterprise, conspiracy to commit money laundering, conspiracy to commit computer hacking, conspiracy to traffic fraudulent identity documents and three counts of conspiracy to traffic narcotics.
At a jury trial the judge vacated two of the narcotics charges (finding them duplicative) and the jury decided, after hearing the evidence from the prosecution and defence, that Ulbricht was guilty of the other charges.
Lag
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In addition to facilitating drug trade, Ulbricht also used his site to purchase assassinations of several "inconvenient" people. Apparently he got scammed and the killings were not carried out, but I recall that ordering these "hit jobs" added quite a lot to his sentence. Read "American Kingpin" by Nick Bilton, it's fascinating.
Jussi Nurminen
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