Over the years, I shake my head whenever I see any "freeRoss" campaign. There are actually innocent people in the US prisons who are actually innocent.
Yes, this is a major problem too. There are lots of campaigns for these people, but here we're in a Bitcoin forum and thus here the focus is on Bitcoin-related issues.
Talking about reducing his sentence is one thing, releasing him is another and celebrating his release is a whole different thing.
Even if my preference indeed is that the draconian US sentences should be generally reduced (see last part of my other post), I don't see why one shouldn't be allowed to celebrate the release of a person convicted to an extreme sentence.
A release could actually raise awareness about the problem of extreme sentences. There is of course the danger that people concentrate too much on the single event (in this case Ulbricht's release), and thus I actually don't completely disagree with you on the matter. There should be a more general discussion about the issue.
It is because of people like these that Bitcoin has a bad name. This man created the Silk Road, which was used to trade all forms of illegal things anonymously, and all payments were made in Bitcoin. If anything, this alone should make the Bitcoin community against him because he's a bigger problem to Bitcoin than the politicians.
Silk Road had actually some terms of service: they didn't allow weapons, abuse imagery and items to defraud other people on the platform (stolen payment means etc.). Basically the main products were drugs. There are lots of countries currently re-evaluating if the drug ban makes sense if on the other side you have far more deaths due to tobacco and alcohol, which are among the most harmful drugs. One can also sustain the opinion that people who want to harm themselves should be allowed to and should not be criminalized.
So I don't think that really Ulbricht was the main reason for the "Bitcoin is for criminals" slogan. I believe malware has contritbuted a lot more to that perception. Bitcoin ransomware is a newer phenomenon and afaik malware was also not permitted on Silk Road (I never used that platform, just to clarify, just judging from media and forum discussions).
money laundry, distributing narcotics, computer hacking, and engaging in a criminal enterprise (in fact, he owned the criminal enterprise) should get you 15 to 20 years if we're being fair.
I disagree here. Sentences over 10 years should only exist for violent crime (murder, rape, mutilation, genocide ...). And in many countries this is actually the case, even if some also include treason and similar crimes into the "near-life sentence" crimes, which is also bad imo.
Would he be shown this much love if he wasn't white? I mean, will Trump give 2 shits about him if he was a black man? This was the same man who immediately put ads out in newspapers for the death penalty to be returned to the state immediately after the central pack five were arrested.
That's also why I don't have much hope that there will be really a discussion about the problem of extreme prison sentences under Trump, so I partly agree here. I generally don't believe the support for Ulbricht from Bitcoiners has racist origins though. He's just a quite well known figure.
Among the convictions he got, I see the worst one is with drug because drug addiction is always bad and it can destroy a person life, kill him or her and also brings lot of terrible effects to their families too.
There are lots of "legal" things which are much worse than illegal drugs, including "legal" drugs like alcohol and tobacco which kill literally millions per year and governments often even cooperate with the lobbyists of the companies making profits with these products. But that's just my personal opinion.
