{"id":27249,"date":"2015-05-30T20:57:04","date_gmt":"2015-05-30T20:57:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ci027cfe6f20122697"},"modified":"2015-05-30T20:57:04","modified_gmt":"2015-05-30T20:57:04","slug":"deep-web-documentary-shines-light-rise-fall-silk-road-1433019424","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/culture\/deep-web-documentary-shines-light-rise-fall-silk-road-1433019424","title":{"rendered":"Deep Web Documentary Shines Light on the Rise and Fall of the Silk Road"},"content":{"rendered":"
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On February 4, 2015, a young man named Ross Ulbricht was convicted of seven charges laid in a U.S. Federal Court in Manhattan. On May 29, 2015, he was sentenced to life in prison for his crimes.<\/p>\n

He was accused of being the owner and operator of the Silk Road website, the most popular online drug marketplace.The indictment charged Ulbricht in seven counts, including narcotics trafficking, narcotics trafficking by means of the Internet, conspiring to commit narcotics trafficking, engaging in a continuing criminal enterprise, conspiring to commit or aid and abet computer hacking, conspiring to traffic in fraudulent identification documents, and conspiring to commit money laundering.<\/p>\n

Filmmaker Alex Winter has written, directed, and produced a film outlining the story of the rise and fall of Silk Road called Deep Web. It premieres on May 31st at 8PM on Epix.<\/p>\n

The documentary tells the story of the rise and fall of Silk Road, bringing the viewer into the world of U.S. law enforcement agencies during their early monitoring and seizure of the website, follows Ulbricht\u2019s court case, and documents the present work of one group of people trying to rebuild a decentralized version of the Silk Road.<\/p>\n

It includes testimonials from government officials, law enforcement, crypto-anarchists, ex-Silk Road vendors, and people who knew Ulbricht personally.<\/p>\n

The filmmakers provide an impartial recounting of this shocking story while bringing to light important topics of discussion.\u201cI really tried to shine a light on aspects of the story that I wasn\u2019t seeing,\u201d says Winter. \u201cIt\u2019s a complex thing to tell a story about for that reason. It\u2019s very easy to paint a story black and white, So a lot of painstaking effort was made to dig into the roots of what these movements are about and examine the grays of what\u2019s seen as a black and white story.<\/p>\n

\u201dThe documentary\u2019s footage of Ulbricht reveals an idealistic, fun-loving, and liberty-minded young American man whose life is paradoxically juxtaposed with that of a drug kingpin. His character straddles the line of between hero and villain throughout the story.<\/p>\n

Creating such a comprehensive look at this whole story wasn\u2019t without its challenges for the filmmakers.\u201cCreating this film required a fairly comprehensive understanding of the tech,\u201d says Winter. \u201cYou also have to have an understanding of the people in the tech communities and get at what their motives are and what they\u2019re trying to accomplish; look at hard truths that may not be palatable to people, and just try to paint a human face of the individual convicted of this crime since the counter narrative is so strong; trying to swim against that current is also challenging.<\/p>\n

\u201dBitcoin Magazine<\/em> spoke to Lyn Ulbricht, Ross Ulbricht\u2019s mother at the SXSW premiere of Deep Web.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe was pretty upset,\u201d said Lyn Ulbricht. \u201cIt was very tough on him. The trial was emotionally draining; very hard on all of us. Since then, he really tries to be positive. He\u2019s strong and resilient. He tells me that when he was feeling restless he started working out. He\u2019s coping but it\u2019s tough. He\u2019s very cut off. I\u2019m proud of him. \u201c\u201cThis case is very important,\u201d concluded Lyn Ulbricht. \u201cThere’s evidence pointing to the fact that the Silk Road server was accessed illegally. It sets precedent going into the digital age that will affect all of us. It\u2019s not just about Ross.<\/p>\n

\u201dNews that two federal agents used their government position for the robbery and extortion<\/a> of large sums of money from the Silk Road has recently surfaced.<\/p>\n

Ulbricht\u2019s attorneys filed a motion for a new trial<\/a> on March 6 on the grounds that the government\u2019s failure to provide this exculpatory material in a timely manner denied Ross his fifth amendment right to due process and fair trial.<\/p>\n

Not denying that the criminal case against these former agents alleges corruption, judge Katherine Forrest has denied a retrial for Ulbricht. According to her ruling, \u201cThis motion for a new trial\u2026does not address how any additional evidence, investigation, or time would have raised even a remote probability that the outcome of the trial would be any different.\u201dWinter is hoping to bring this story to everyday people and make them think about things that they would\u2019ve otherwise never given thought to.<\/p>\n

\u201cI hope that this project challenges people enough to dig deeper. I hope that people have enough humanity to question things. I hope that it provides impetus for more nuanced discourse about the internet and the movements around the internet that I think are very important.<\/p>\n

\u201dOverall, this gripping documentary demands the viewer’s\u2019 attention and contains the staunch realization that we are entering the \u201cfuture\u201d. Along with that comes problems like cyber crime and unknown hacking methods used by both citizens and governments. Some questions to be asked are: Is it safer for drug deals to go on online? What are the US citizen’s relationship to their government? Is this altering?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On February 4, 2015, a young man named Ross Ulbricht was convicted of seven charges laid in a U.S. Federal Court in Manhattan. On May 29, 2015, he was sentenced to life in prison for his crimes. He was accused of being the owner and operator of the Silk Road website, the most popular online […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3582,"featured_media":27248,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[2197,3266,87,808,1472],"class_list":{"0":"post-27249","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-culture","8":"tag-darknet","9":"tag-darkweb","10":"tag-ross-ulbricht","11":"tag-silk-road","12":"tag-tor"},"author_data":{"id":3582,"name":"Kevin Cruz","nicename":"kevin-cruz","avatar_url":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/bitcoin-schmitcoin-promo-image-1-2-96x96.png"},"featured_image_url":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/11\/deep-web-documentary-shines-light-on-the-rise-and-fall-of-the-silk-road.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27249","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3582"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27249"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27249\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27248"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27249"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27249"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27249"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}