“End
of “Silk Road”- The FBI has shut
down the alleged online marketplace known as Silk Road. Silk Road is an
anonymous Internet marketplace for illegal drugs and criminal activities like
murder for hire. Silk Road was used by several thousands of drug dealers to
sell hundreds of kilograms of illegal drugs. The site has been running since
2011, with more than 900,000 registered users. The site used the digital
currency Bitcoin. The owner of the site used computers at Internet cafes and
other public places in order to hide the location of its servers and identities
of the administrators.
The
owner of the website was Ross William Ulbricht, a 29-year-old former physics student from San
Francisco. After graduation, he adopted an “anti-government” attitude and the
Internet allowed him to attempt his goals to “end "coercion and aggression"
by creating "a world without the systemic use of force."” In
Ulbricht’s case, disinhibition allowed him to carry out a virtual crime. John
Suler discusses several different forms, and I believe dissociative anonymity
and invisibility apply to this particular case, as well as minimization of
status. Dissociative anonymity allows for a disconnect from the consequences of
the virtual transactions because of the anonymity the Internet provides.
Invisibility because all transactions took place over the Internet, and all
under avatars. And finally, minimization of status because on Ulbricht’s
website, everyone was equal. They paid to have something done; it was a
business transaction whether it was drug trafficking or murder for hire. The
disinhibition brought on by the Internet made the Silk Road a “safe” place for
illegal transactions to take place.
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