ROSS ULBRICHT has been sentenced to life in jail for his role in the Silk Road.<p>This article shows what a waste of resources this trail was. Online markets for illegal substances are going to follow the path of file sharing, both are nearly impossible to stop.<p>"Closing down the web’s biggest drug shop has simply cleared the way for competitors."
Can you imagine what if someone open sources these kind of websites? Then pretty much every big shot drug dealer would have their own copy without needing much tech expertise. Silk Road got busted in part because DPR failed to fix bugs that caused IP leaks. But if it was open sources then these bugs would have been quickly fixed and busts would become increasingly challenging. I think DPR's vision is undeniable. Ultimately, the invention of Internet is leading to free choices that can no longer be suppressed by laws or even morality of situation - whether we like it or not. The ethical questions such as what if children uses these websites or what if your brother became heroin addict because of it - these questions would painfully be mute in face of technological reality that will be enforced upon us. In effect, we are slowly but steadily moving towards a framework that is dramatically going to be different than traditional governments, regulated economics, monopolized currencies, power hierarchy, bureaucracy, rather indirect democracy and laws crafted for vested interests as opposed to people themselves. There seems to be some purer form of laws that seems to be taking form all by itself that won't be human manufactured and probably would be as enforcing, universal and powerful as laws of nature itself - at least as long as we allow technology to exist.
That one chart single handedly shows how permanent the idea of online drug markets are and also how attractive the field currently is for further innovation. It shows a market with high turn-over which to the minds of a geeky criminal translates to the question "can I do it better and survive longer?"<p>As a .gov I'd be concerned that the eventual party that does get it right, might have state support. A situation where instead of paying the bills of drug addiction therapists within the site, as Silkroad did, it would ban them outright.
Why doesn't North Korea set up a drug marketplace? It would be diplomatically impossible to shut down and it would bring in valuable hard currency. Some users would be put off by funding oppression but others would flock to having certainty guarantees. NK apparently trains enough security engineers that building this isn't outside of their scope.
I wonder at what point the Drug Cartels just will start running Darknet sites themselves. It would be a new thing for them, but many of the Mexican cartels are actually very technically sophisticated (including running their own telecommunications networks).<p>I imagine taking down a darknet site run by groups with that sort of power would be near impossible.