The Silk Curtain

The Silk Curtain

Article from Issue 177/2015
Author(s):

On May 29, Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht received a stern sentence for his involvement with building and operating the world's first global anonymous supermarket for everything. Some were surprised with the severity – life in prison without parole for the 31-year-old "Internet entrepreneur." But the Silk Road led its wayfarers way out beyond the cutting edge, and if you live your life as a pioneer, sometimes you get surprised.

Dear Linux Pro Reader,

On May 29, Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht received a stern sentence for his involvement with building and operating the world's first global anonymous supermarket for everything. Some were surprised with the severity – life in prison without parole for the 31-year-old "Internet entrepreneur." But the Silk Road led its wayfarers way out beyond the cutting edge, and if you live your life as a pioneer, sometimes you get surprised.

The recent history of the Internet is littered with tales of technology leading out in front of the legal system. It is pretty obvious the law allowing a life sentence for a criminal boss was not created for a guy like Ross Ulbricht. One gets the vision of Ulbricht as an extreme libertarian who also happens to be an entrepreneur, who also happens to be a computer whiz. Still, he didn't get $13 million in bitcoins on his laptop by reprising his childhood role as an Eagle scout.

[...]

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