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Silk Road (marketplace)

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Silk Road
File:Silk Road Logo.png
A user selling cookiesItem description page
Type of siteOnline black market
Available inEnglish
Owner"Dread Pirate Roberts"
Revenue1.2 million US dollars per month
URLhttp://silkroadvb5piz3r.onion (requires tor) (requires registration) (wiki / forum)
CommercialYes
RegistrationRequired
LaunchedFebruary 2011
Current statusActive

Silk Road is an online black market operated as a Tor hidden service.

History

The website launched in February 2011 with development having begun six months prior. Buyers can register on Silk Road for free, but sellers must purchase new accounts through auctions to purportedly mitigate the possibility of malicious individuals distributing tainted goods.

As of 2012, monthly sales are estimated to be slightly over 1.2 million US dollars, which corresponds to approximately 92,000 US dollars per month in commissions for the Silk Road operators.

Products

The majority of products avaiable to purchase on Silk Road qualify as contraband in most jurisdictions. Most sellers are based in the United Kingdom and the United States, and offer products such as heroin, LSD, cannabis, and other drugs. However, the site's operators prohibit goods or services intended to harm others, such as stolen credit card numbers, counterfeit currency, firearms, personal information, assassinations, weapons of mass destruction, and materials used to make such weapons. There are also a range of legitimate products for sale, such as art, apparel, books, jewelry, pornography, and writing services.

Transactions

Buyers and sellers conduct all transactions with Bitcoin, a crypto-currency that can provide strong anonymity. Most of the BTC prices on Silk Road are pegged to the United States dollar and fluctuate in accordance to the current BTC/USD exchange rate.

An administrator claims "over 99% of all transactions conducted within the escrow system are completed to the satisfaction of both buyer and seller, or a mutually agreed upon resolution is found."

Reception

Press

Gawker wrote a comprehensive article on Silk Road, describing it as "the underground website where you can buy any drug imaginable"; NPR has referred to the site as the "Amazon.com of illegal drugs"; The Economist has likewise described it, in an article on Bitcoin, as "a sort of eBay for drugs hidden in a dark corner of the web known as Tor.

After this attention, traffic to the website increased dramatically and Bitcoin saw a corresponding rise in value. The site was also used during the markup hearing for the 2011 Stop Online Piracy Act as an exemplar of the evolution of some websites to distributed networking and computer systems which by design are not blockable by domain name filtering such as proposed in SOPA.

Legal

Australia

The Australian Federal Police has stated that "anyone engaging in illegal activity through online marketplaces such as Silk Road...will not always remain anonymous and when caught, they will be prosecuted," in a press release.

United States

In reaction to a Gawker article on the marketplace, US Senators Charles Schumer and Joe Manchin sent a letter to US Attorney General Eric Holder and DEA Administrator Michele Leonhart insisting that the agency shut down the marketplace. In a press conference Schumer described Silk Road as follows:

It's a certifiable one-stop shop for illegal drugs that represents the most brazen attempt to peddle drugs online that we have ever seen. It's more brazen than anything else by lightyears.

— Senator Schumer

Subsequently, Silk Road's administrators posted on the Silk Road forums the following statement:

The die have been cast and now we will see how they land. We will be diverting even more effort into countering their attacks and making the site as resilient as possible, which means we may not be as responsive to messages for a while. I'm sure this news will scare some off, but should we win the fight, a new era will be born. Even if we lose, the genie is out of the bottle and they are fighting a losing War already.

— Silk Road Administration

See also

References

  1. ^ "[1207.7139] Traveling the Silk Road: A measurement analysis of a large anonymous online marketplace". Arxiv.org. Retrieved 2 December 2012.
  2. Formerly http://ianxz6zefk72ulzz.onion/; SR announced a move on 1 December 2011
  3. ^ Justin Norrie; Asher Moses (12 June 2011). "Drugs bought with virtual cash". The Sydney Morning Herald. Fairfax Media. Retrieved 5 November 2011.
  4. Public statement from a Silk Road spokesperson 1 March 2011.
  5. "...we shut down new seller accounts briefly, but have now opened them up again. This time, we are limiting the supply of new seller accounts and auctioning them off to the highest bidders. Our hope is that by doing this, only the most professional and committed sellers will have access to seller accounts. For the time being, we will be releasing one new seller account every 48 hours, though this is subject to change. If you want to become a seller on Silk Road, click "become a seller" at the bottom of the homepage, read the seller contract and the Seller's Guide, click "I agree" at the bottom, and then you'll be taken to the bidding page. Here, you should enter the maximum bid you are willing to make for your account upgrade. The system will automatically outbid the next highest bidder up to this amount." Silk Road admin account, http://dkn255hz262ypmii.onion/index.php?topic=360.0
  6. "We received a threat from a very disturbed individual who said they would pose as a legitimate vendor, but send carcinogenic and poisonous substances instead of real products and because seller registration is open, they would just create a new account as soon as they got bad feedback. This was shocking and horrifying to us and we immediately closed new seller registration. Of course we need new sellers, though, so we figured that charging for new seller accounts would deter this kind of behavior. "
  7. ^ Adrian Chen (1 June 2011). "The Underground Website Where You Can Buy Any Drug Imaginable". Gawker. Retrieved 15 June 2011.
  8. Anonymous (1 January 2012). "Silk Road: A Vicious Blow to the War on Drugs". The Austin Cut. Retrieved 30 October 2012.
  9. Davis, Joshua (10 October 2011). "The Crypto-Currency". The New Yorker. Condé Nast. p. 62. Retrieved 5 November 2011.
  10. "Restricted Items". Sellers Guide, Silk Road. Retrieved 23 October 2011. Please do not list anything who's purpose is to harm or defraud, such as stolen credit cards, counterfeit currency, personal info, assassinations, and weapons of mass destruction (chemical/bio weaponry, nukes, and anything used to make them). ...
  11. Bitcoin Anonymity
  12. "State of the Road Address"
  13. NPR Staff (12 June 2011). "Silk Road: Not Your Father's Amazon.com" (Broadcast radio segment). All Things Considered. NPR. Retrieved 5 November 2011. The e-commerce website Silk Road is being called the Amazon.com of illegal drugs.
  14. "Monetarists Anonymous". The Economist. 29 September 2012.
  15. SOPA markup hearing, 15 December 2011, official proceedings, entered into committee record at approx. 17:40 - 17:47 and 1:28:10 - 1:31:55 (video timing, not recorded time) EST.
  16. "Media Release: AFP and Customs warn users of Silk Road". Austrial Federal Police.
  17. Whippman, Ruth (12 June 2011). "Bitcoin: the hacker currency that's taking over the web". The Guardian. Guardian News and Media. Retrieved 5 November 2011.
  18. Charles E. Schumer (6 June 2011). "Manchin Urges Federal Law Enforcement to Shut Down Online Black Market for Illegal Drugs" (Press release). Press Releases - Newsroom - Joe Manchin, United States Senator, West Virginia. Retrieved 5 November 2011. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
  19. "Schumer Pushes to Shut Down Online Drug Marketplace". NBC New York. Associated Press. 5 June 2011. Retrieved 15 June 2011.
  20. http://ianxz6zefk72ulzz.onion/index.php/forums/thread/894

External links

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