Ulbricht was arrested and sent to prison in 2013 for creating Silk Road. Even though Ulbricht is in prison, he receives a lot of support from outside.

The “Free Ross” movement has hired a billboard in Time Square as part of the campaign to free Ross Ulbricht, the founder of the dark web Silk Road smuggling market.

Ross Ulbricht is currently serving a double-life sentence for his role as an entrepreneur in a dark web market place. Ulbricht has spent seven years in prison and it seems unlikely that he will ever be released without forgiveness. He is currently 36 years old.

According to a Twitter post from the “Ross Clemency” account, the billboard has been rented for several months. The tweet also states that a “single generous contributor” paid for the campaign message, which was not funded by any of the donations they have received.

Double-Life Sentence for Silk Road Crimes

Ulbricht was arrested and sent to prison in 2013 for establishing the dark web Silk Road market. He operated the site under the alias “Dread Pirate Robert”, a clear tribute to the main character of The Princess Bride.

The online marketplace on the dark web, Silk Road, reached its peak in popularity in 2011, pioneering mail-order drugs and another smuggling. Unfortunately, they also used Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies to trade on the black market.

Court documents from that time show that the dark web site conducted around 1,229,465 transactions during its two years of operation. Ulbricht received a percentage of all operations.

Solutions for Child Pornography from Prison

Even though Ulbritch has no Internet access, he has been able to stay active in the cryptocurrency community through his friends and supporters, who post their contributions online.

Last May 20th, one of the followers of Ulbritch’s Medium account proposed automated solutions “ZKANN”, which the creator of Silk Road believes to be an effective measure against the distribution of child pornography and pedophilia on encrypted platforms.

Unfortunately, the use of cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum has become the preferred payment method for human trafficking and Internet-based sexual exploitation services, which include extortion pornography and the sexual assault of minors and children.

Ulbricht says that many other large platforms already deploy algorithms to automatically moderate the content. He also recommends that encrypted platform operators combine zero-knowledge proofs (ZKP) with artificial neural networks (ANN) to detect content that shows child abuse.

Furthermore, he suggests that data from law enforcement agencies be used to train ZKANN (ZKP + ANN) to identify child pornography and other inappropriate content. He notes that it would prevent such content from being released in other public systems.

The same as the namesake for his alias “Dread Pirate Robert”, it seems that Ulbricht is even more than he looks. He has a bad public reputation for being a drug dealer and misusing cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin. However, he has some talents that are worth respecting, such as his ability to create blockchain tools to help other people. Maybe this is the reason why he has received such strong support for leniency.

By Alexander Salazar

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