The story of former Dread Pirate Roberts account holder Ross Ulbritch is truly unfortunate for two reasons. The first being that he is currently living in a cell right now and the second because the ideas he spread and embodied will never die so him being locked up is unnecessary to say the least. Ross Ulbritch was one of many account holders on the Silk Road but was ultimately the mastermind behind it. He also served the role as a pioneer/ hero within the local deep web community. His involvement initiated with his desire to build an online black market that could avoid law enforcement. It has been said that this was Ross’s last hope and the creation of his sight reached great success. Even to this day his platform is still widely use across the Dark webb. It was more than drugs and getting around laws for Ross. He often preached of peace and a safe Utopia like world that they had essentially created for people to be free from constraints. He had a goal of using economic theory as a means to abolish “the use of coercion and aggression against man”. This brings me to my next point that the Silk road was so much more than a drug trading site it was a community and still is to this day. Ross is one case that got caught and the government unfortunately made an example out of him but it is rare to get caught on the dark web. There were at least five different Dread Pirate Roberts accounts managing Silk Road and he’s the only one who got caught. There still is minimal law enforcement type risk on Silk Road or the Dark web in general but hackers have been known to gain access of computer cameras among other violations of privacy. The utopia Ross talked about was real but it was a mere Oasis in the most dangerous deep dark world. It’s noramlly impossible to trace people on the Dark Web because the level of anonymity is unparalleled. First, in order to even access the site one needs a separate browser to even acess the dark web. Secondly, within the silk road for example the currency used is bitcoin, which is untraceable. This is the whole idea behind silk road, the dark web/net however has other incentives for such anonymity. The dark net is where the worst of the worst go for anything they want, they’re people who promote peace like Ross and others online like terrorists and hackers. Ross risked utilizing such a high risk platform to build what is the most integrated and secure drug platform in the world. Unfortunately Ross’s story ends with him getting arrested at a San Francisco library a few years ago but his legacy will live on forever because of what he has left behind.
La vida 