The ‘Free Ross’ movement has hired a billboard in New York’s Times Square as part of its campaign for the release of the infamous Silk Road darknet market founder Ross Ulbricht. According to the Twitter account’ Clemency for Ross,’ the billboard will display the message and image for several months. The account emphasized that the billboard was funded by Ross supporters and not from the donations made on the website. Ulbricht is currently facing a double life sentence, and without clemency, he will never be released.
Ross Ulbricht was arrested for operating the darknet website Silk Road.
Ulbricht, who is now 36 years old, was arrested and incarcerated in 2013 to establish and operate the notorious darknet marketplace ‘Silk Road.’ Ulbricht was found guilty of seven charges, including drug trafficking, money laundering, computer hacking, criminal enterprise, and assisting and abetting the distribution of illegal substances over the internet, and sentenced to two life sentences plus 40 years with no possibility of parole. In this case, the harsh sentencing was criticized by many as they believe that punishment he got did not meet the crime. The sentencing, in this case, was given to set an example.
Times Square says FREE ROSS! #FreeRoss2020 pic.twitter.com/lbeRvakH2c
— Free_Ross (@Free_Ross) May 20, 2020
Tim Draper also called the release of Ross Ulbricht.
Billionaire investor Tim Draper has also called for the release of Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht several times. Ross has served seven years of his double life sentence. Despite remaining behind bars, Ross Ulbricht has contributed to the crypto community with his opinions on bitcoin prices and other things. On May 20, Ulbricht’s medium account posted an article proposing a solution to ‘the content problem’ on encrypted platforms.
He offered suggestions about the challenge of removing harmful content in an automated fashion that doesn’t require manually sifting through such. He wrote that many large platforms already deploy algorithms such as artificial neural networks (ANNs) to moderate content, and recommended that the operators of these encrypted platforms utilize zero-knowledge proofs in conjunction with ANNs to identify content depicting child abuse.