Whilst Ross Ulbricht was imprisoned for founding and maintaining the Silk Road darknet market, the threat he represents to the statist elite can't be defeated.
Center for a Stateless Society (C4SS) writer Ryan Calhoun argued in a post on that Ross Ulbricht, who allegedly used the shared pseudonym Dread Pirate Roberts, defied the US state and that his trial was based upon the fears of the ruling political elite rather than any crime committed by Ross himself. From Calhoun's emotive account:
By placing him in your torture chamber known colloquially as the U.S Prison System you have broadcast your hatred and your fear of what he represents to the world once more. “Here remains The Dread Pirate Roberts, Defiler of the Narrative of Necessity”. He may remain there for a time, but his story cannot. The truth cannot. There are no cages that can hold the truth and I will do whatever I can to spread it. Ross was not the first nor is he the last. The people have been striking out against this bogus fiction since it was first taught to them. You called them criminals. You called their actions violent and you call your own violence necessity.In many cases, the rationale for banning websites and services has more to do with conserving power in the hands of the state and traditional economic elites rather than actually preventing social harms. Calhoun sees this as the case in the prosecution of Ross Ulbricht. The analysis is in agreement with many other antistatist writers, who regard the Silk Road as one in a long projected trend of web-borne rebellions against traditional state power.
Describing the US prison system as a "torture chamber", Calhoun stated that the life imprisonment of Ross Ulbricht is no less than a cynical death sentence against a bright and principled man whose only crime was threatening the ruling US mafia state's grasp on power.
Real reason for bans is always to conserve the 1%'s hold on #power + #wealth: Szymanski http://t.co/l0LuU1CH5I pic.twitter.com/T9aVZraytL
— The clubof.info Blog (@ClubOfInfo) May 17, 2015
