Deep Web Page #2

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this marketplace is all about.

It's not so much about selling

drugs as much as it is to say,

to make a political

statement of sorts, right?

"This shouldn't be prohibited.

"We're free to do what we want

"and we have the technology to do it.

So there. "

The news around the Silk Road

came almost entirely

from law enforcement

and government officials

with little insight from those

who were behind the market itself.

So the core architects and

vendors of the Silk Road

were sought out using encryption

keys to verify their identities

and preserving their anonymity.

This is the first time

they have spoken publicly.

The Silk Road didn't appear

to have a single leader.

There were the regular posts

from the systems administrator,

but otherwise the service appeared

to be primarily community-run.

Then on February 5, 2012,

after a highly successful

first year of business, the Silk Road

administrator made an announcement...

- You're the Dread Pirate

Roberts, admit it. - With pride.

The Dread Pirate Roberts was cribbed

from the mythical character from the novel

and film "The Princess Bride,"

and the choice was no accident.

In the original story

by William Goldman,

the Dread Pirate Roberts was

a nom de guerre handed down

from user to user and

passed along eternally.

The man I inherited it from was not

the real Dread Pirate Roberts either.

The real Roberts has been retired 15 years

and I have been Roberts ever since.

I shall retire and hand

the name over to someone else.

This Dread Pirate Roberts,

or DPR,

would come to spearhead

the Silk Road forums and was

generally assumed to be the

creator and owner of the site.

The Dread Pirate Roberts

to me seemed to be

kind of the most interesting

figure in that whole world.

On the Silk Road forums,

he was constantly posting

these manifestos and love

letters to his users

and Libertarian

philosophical treaties.

And he even had like this, uh,

Dread Pirate Roberts book club

where he hosted discussions of Austrian

economics and free market philosophy.

At the same time,

nobody knew who he was.

He had never spoken

to the press before.

I approached him on the Silk

Road forum mid-2012 and, uh,

started kind of just like trying

to persuade him to talk,

chipping away at him and just

bugging him constantly.

The actual trigger,

I think that made him decide to talk

was this competing dark

website called "Atlantis. "

They were really much more aggressive

in their marketing than the Silk Road.

They put out this YouTube video

advertising Atlantis

as the... the new, better

dark web drug site.

So when I went back to

the Dread Pirate Roberts

and said, "You know,

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