There is a comic I remember from my childhood, "Tom the Dancing Bug" written by Ruben Bolling. He had a character called "Harvey Richard, Lawyer for Children". I linked a couple of examples [1], [2], [3], [4] but the satire, IMO, is incredible. It lampoons humanities proclivity to layer pseudo-rationality onto the irrational things that we do.
It also reminds me of the TV show "The Wire" when Stringer Bell, a senior member of a street drug distribution ring of urban thugs, forces them to conduct their meetings using Rules of Order. [5] If you watch to the end, you see that in those circumstances order means nothing, it is just a facade.
I guess you could say that I'm cynical about the prospects of such a court and I tend to see the underlying truth in the satires that point it out.
There's a good book by Kevin Poulsen called "The Kingpin: How one Hacker Took Over the Billion-Dollar Cybercrime Underground" that is a bit out of date at this point (2011), but it goes into great length on all of the dynamics of the early forums where all of carding/spam/botnet operators did business.
In a forum/marketplace like this, your reputation is worth a lot of money. And if you scam someone and get banned, sure, you can just join again under a new identity, but building your reputation up again means you will lose out on a lot of potential sales.
Great book, indeed dated because its pre-dark web (think a place like Hackforums, before Tor was widespread used -- though it did exist, as did Freenet).
The crown jewels in such a community is operator/admin access. For both police (basically, for infiltration), as well as for scammers (because they could create or kill credibility with sockpuppets, bans). Remember that's how Reddit was started (sockpuppets), and Assange did it as well.
That book is fascinating and markedly well written. The underground.. the schemes.. those characters !
It's killing me that Poulsen didn't release another such gem. There's plenty of material in this vein, beginning chiefly with the Gonzales saga - which dwarfs Iceman's story.
Mr Poulsen if you happen in this thread, please ! Do it. I'd pay 100$ for a new story.
I live in NJ where weed is legal but you can't buy it (legally) so we are sort of in a weird spot.
anyway, it makes me really not care about ordering weed on the dark web from CA. if the feds catch it, its an ounce of weed to a residence, they don't care and im not gonna go in front of some federal judge on federal drug crimes. if CA or NJ catch it, its legal there, who cares.
but the site I use uses an escrow system where if you don't get the product or if you aren't satisfied you can file a complaint. i've never used it as i always have gotten what i've ordered but it is pretty odd.
> If you have LOST your weed, please feel free to reach out to us! Your word is good enough for us. If you say you LOST IT, we will FIND IT, GUARANTEED or you pay nothing.
I used that and got my money back when a shipping didn't arrive.
Also the quality and honesty of the sellers on the quantity they're selling you is great.
It's beautiful to see how the market and a reputation system can work wonders, even among strangers with anonymised identities.
The street experience equivalent is terrible. A friend of mine (who self medicated in one of the western totalitarian regimes who prohibit weed) got a bag of tea, tissues smelling like weed, he got a knife pulled on him, he got scammed in an elaborate plot which involved him keeping a bag of flour (supposedly coke) while the dealer supposedly went to get his weed for a 50, he had homeless dragging him to a gang of criminals under the pretence of buying weed. Eventually he found someone reliable, a middle aged father with a stable but low paying job and a family - but it's a miracle he's still alive.
Oh my god. If anything I applaud his willingness to stay on the hunt :)
Presumably this was in a larger city, as most of the places I have been have had ad hoc, safe and established distribution networks that weren't too difficult to break into after some time. This is in the US though and I can't quite tell what country you're referring to (though I could see someone referring to the US tongue-in-cheek that way)
I'd go even further to make a case that the market and its reputation system works similarly well for the aforementioned ground level networks, if you can find them. Read the room, be a desirable client and behave with everyone's interests in mind and you will likely never have an issue. Good business is good business regardless of whether it happens online or in person I suppose.
As an aside I often wonder to what degree the prevalence of onion markets over the past decade have impacted the availability of weed within these offline distribution networks. My anecdotal experience from my legal-weed-desert neck of the US has been a slow growth of offerings and inventory stability and a 20-40% reduction in prices. No idea how much of that is due to the online markets.
> Under state law, that first day for adult sales at licensed dispensaries is supposed to come next month. The enabling marijuana legalization legislation signed into law by Gov. Phil Murphy last year directs the CRC to begin adult use marijuana sales before Feb. 22, with 30-day notice beginning Jan. 23.
> But there's a catch. The CRC is yet to issue any licenses for recreational marijuana sales, so even if sales are approved as of Feb. 22, there won't be any dispensaries selling it.
I can't speak for NJ, but in CA it's mostly local opposition that keeps pot stores out. It can be legal at the state level, but if the cities won't give you a permit to open a store, your choices are limited.
Cannabis is still federally illegal, and sending it through the mail is on top of that a federal mail crime. Not too wise, though I'm not at all against using cannabis.
It would be pretty amazing for within the US USPS to not only search but find powdered drugs or pills. It's protected and they need a search warrant. Reasonable cause etc. Maybe if they already had an investigation on you and you were distributing.
Customs on the other hand...
Though if it's small volume they will often just send you a scary letter in the mail, especially if it's just sketchy looking pills. Or if the scammer is smart they'll just send you the letter and take your money ! Or at least that's what SWIM said from my wasted 20s. LMFAO I miss earlier internet sometimes
These kinds of alternative justice systems always seem fascinating to me. I feel like a sociological study on "alternative forms of justice" could be very fruitful.
There’s a book I really enjoyed called Narconomics.
It helps explain all aspects of the drug trade through the lens of business.
One of the most fascinating takeaways was how they handle “contract enforcement” in the absence of a legal system or courts (hint: Violence)
I recall an anecdote that Mexican cartels would hire Mexicans —- and not Dutch —- in order to serve as drug mules smuggling product into Amsterdam. Dutch mules would get caught less often, but Mexicans were much less likely to steal the drugs entirely. Because when you sign up to be a mule they take down the names and addresses of your entire family (nearby), and will kill them if you steal the product. Contract enforcement.
judgements from the usual court system are enforced by the police, who are authorized to use force - i.e. violence - in the event of non-compliance. this is not a unique feature of the drug trade.
There's been some good research into the history of legal systems. See David Friedman's book Legal Systems Very Different From Ours [1]. There's a small section about prisoners. But a new chapter could definitely be written about cyber-criminals!
Personal anecdote: quite a while ago I got thrown in jail in Thailand (80 people in a cell, a hole in the ground to shit in, one bowl of rice per day, sleep on the concrete floor kind of place).
My embassy was quite helpful in negotiating with the guards to get me in a "VIP" cell, which was a room within the cell run by some Iranians. They said if I paid them a certain sum, I'd be under their wing and they'd protect me.
Couple days later one of them woke me up and asked me to check if I had any cigarettes missing, which I did (not that I cared much). Someone had seen a Russian guy take some of my smokes while I was asleep and told the "boss". They went and beat the crap out of him.
The Iranians also had a line to the cleaning crew who would pass in front of the cell once a day. Every morning you could place an order for (almost) anything you wanted from the outside world. They'd take the payments, write it all down and pass it to the cleaning crew through the bars of the cell who would deliver it all the next day. So while most of our cell mates fought over bowls of rice, in the VIP room we had feasts of curries, fruit, soft drinks. It was like a banquet every day.
The main Iranian guy even had Russian girls come over but they couldn't enter the cells.
The day I got out one of them approached me and ever so gently and politely asked me "You are going home yes? Could I please have your towel?". He could have just taken it along with anything else I had but he stuck to the rules.
So yeah, these guys definitely had a legal system!
That sounds similar to creditors selling the right to collect debt repayments to a debt collector, or patent holders selling their patents to a patent enforcement company or patent troll (usually the same).
Yeah, I should have phrased it differently. I'm sure these exist, but maybe sociology isn't the right discipline, and/or I assume I really don't have enough familiarity to find what I'm looking for.
Funny, my friend and I were just talking about this kind of thing last night. I've been watching lots of Soft White Underbelly[1] interviews with gangsters, mafia , etc. and my friend's been reading about the transition from honor culture to state obedience in 1600's in Norway. The conclusion is that any time you create a black market by banning something in demand then a parallel state (competing with the "legitimate" state) will always pop up to protect property, trade and tax because not only is the "legitimate" state enforcing the ban, but they are simultaneously abstaining from their typical "duties" in that regard, leaving a gap to be filled.
I find it interesting that the same thing can be achieved online but without the violence that is necessary in person. It's definitely a different space.
It's a bit more specific than just being "faster" and "more efficient". There's two main advantages:
First, waiver of class-action rights. This is a big deal because there's a cottage industry of enterprising lawyers who do find a couple main plaintiffs, generate a suit on behalf of a large class against a deep-pocketed defendant, and settle for something around a dollar per class member plus millions in legal fees.
Second is a limitation on discovery and subpoena rights for plaintiffs. In a traditional court setting, you may be allowed to force a company to turn over extensive communication records and other documents, corporate executives to testify or be deposed, and even burden non-party witnesses (eg, part suppliers).
In many jurisdictions, companies that wish to use binding arbitration have to pay the entirety of the significant fees to fund the arbitration system (and in a timely manner). It's still worthwhile for them to do so, even if they aren't tipping the scales of justice one micrometer. With the exact same outcome as a court case, the arbitration fees are fully worth it to avoid discovery, better protect executives from being forced to testify, dodge class-action fishing expeditions, etc.
> it's faster and more efficient than the judicial system
Only in theory, or maybe if you take averages. As soon as you give people rights (to see the evidence against them, to confront witnesses, etc.) you have to create processes to manage those rights, and it ends up resembling the judicial system.
I had a friend go through a wrongful termination arbitration, and it took two years. Lawyers were present on both sides; the larger party could (and did) stretch out the process so as to bankrupt the smaller one; settlement negotiations were interminable. It's not clear to me that a court case would have been appreciably longer.
I've heard the same stories. People imagine "arbitration" is like Judge Judy: you both tell your side, and then she issues a ruling. Badda bing, badda boom.
NOT! You have to get a lawyer, and it drags on and on.
I had a friend, a barrister and an architect, whose main business was arbitrating big international deals in the construction and mining industries. By writing arbitration into the contract you get an arbitrator who is a top-notch lawyer and knows the industry, whereas if you rely on the court system the parties are going to have to spend time (and money) educating the judge, possibly unsuccessfully.
This guy was actually part of a consortium of similar lawyers all over the world.
These disputes are completely normal. The amounts of money involved in these contracts is huge; and it's impossible to write into a contract every detail of what might go wrong. So when something goes wrong that isn't written into the letter of the contract, arbitrators pick up the slack. Contract arbitration is generally a paper exercise. The parties don't normally face-off in a courtroom.
There are even internationally-agreed standards of jurisprudence concerned with this kind of arbitration. The specific rules to be used willl be written into the contract.
Ha, these articles always use xss.as instead of exploit.in, despite the latter being vastly more popular and appropriate, because exploit.in charges $100 for membership.
I sympathize because, who wants to shell out $100. But even big name news outlets all use xss.in, you see it everywhere, precisely because it's free and anyone can join. Nothing wrong with using it really, just something amusing I've noticed
This just shows that people naturally gravitate toward a system of social harmony and the rule of law, as it lets you reasonably adjust your behavior, as the expectations are formalized, and everyone else is assumed to be abiding by them.
The irony is that real world is increasingly moving away from that, toward the "everyone for themselves, nothing matters" chaos.
Words are thoughts. Thoughts are mental processes. Be careful with treating similarity in appearance with equivalence in substance.
> social harmony and the rule of law
The association between the story and social harmony seems plausible, but actually superficial.
Social harmony would be that people involuntarily work together without an authority, and reached mutual agreement on their dispute. To me, it is a sign of social conflicts that dark web actors need arbitration.
Although that by itself matches our impression that dark web actors are lawless individuals should be punished. More ironically, the story actually shows that they are not lawless in the absolute sense. They just breakd the laws majority of the society abides by (or the majority actually do not even realize exits).
> rule of law
You know, rule of law is more of a political term nowadays. It refers to a western style of political organization framework centered on written laws and a voting process to revising them, and many other subtle details.
Is arbitration on darkweb an example of rule by law?
I tend to say no. Arbiter is necessary in all steps, and they seem are not codifying their "laws" for dealing with the future occrance of similar litigation at all.
Well, obviously, this is almost a metaphor, as it's a stretch to literally apply the term Rule of Law to something as sketchy as the dark web. Also, note that I did not use something like "Law and Order", as that can have a pretty unpleasant meaning.
Readit News
It also reminds me of the TV show "The Wire" when Stringer Bell, a senior member of a street drug distribution ring of urban thugs, forces them to conduct their meetings using Rules of Order. [5] If you watch to the end, you see that in those circumstances order means nothing, it is just a facade.
I guess you could say that I'm cynical about the prospects of such a court and I tend to see the underlying truth in the satires that point it out.
1. https://www.gocomics.com/tomthedancingbug/2015/02/26
2. https://www.gocomics.com/tomthedancingbug/2014/12/25
3. https://www.pinterest.ca/pin/545850417313484171/
4. https://www.pinterest.ca/pin/178807047675716661/
5. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xO1zxPRRf4g
But these comics are great.
Deleted Comment
In a forum/marketplace like this, your reputation is worth a lot of money. And if you scam someone and get banned, sure, you can just join again under a new identity, but building your reputation up again means you will lose out on a lot of potential sales.
The crown jewels in such a community is operator/admin access. For both police (basically, for infiltration), as well as for scammers (because they could create or kill credibility with sockpuppets, bans). Remember that's how Reddit was started (sockpuppets), and Assange did it as well.
It's killing me that Poulsen didn't release another such gem. There's plenty of material in this vein, beginning chiefly with the Gonzales saga - which dwarfs Iceman's story.
Mr Poulsen if you happen in this thread, please ! Do it. I'd pay 100$ for a new story.
anyway, it makes me really not care about ordering weed on the dark web from CA. if the feds catch it, its an ounce of weed to a residence, they don't care and im not gonna go in front of some federal judge on federal drug crimes. if CA or NJ catch it, its legal there, who cares.
but the site I use uses an escrow system where if you don't get the product or if you aren't satisfied you can file a complaint. i've never used it as i always have gotten what i've ordered but it is pretty odd.
Isn't there a service in Maine where you can pay psychics to find your lost weed and bring it back to you?
https://www.incredibles.me/your-first-order-what-you-need-to...
> If you have LOST your weed, please feel free to reach out to us! Your word is good enough for us. If you say you LOST IT, we will FIND IT, GUARANTEED or you pay nothing.
L = Like,
O = Obfuscatedly
S = Sell Me
T = The Weed
Also the quality and honesty of the sellers on the quantity they're selling you is great. It's beautiful to see how the market and a reputation system can work wonders, even among strangers with anonymised identities.
The street experience equivalent is terrible. A friend of mine (who self medicated in one of the western totalitarian regimes who prohibit weed) got a bag of tea, tissues smelling like weed, he got a knife pulled on him, he got scammed in an elaborate plot which involved him keeping a bag of flour (supposedly coke) while the dealer supposedly went to get his weed for a 50, he had homeless dragging him to a gang of criminals under the pretence of buying weed. Eventually he found someone reliable, a middle aged father with a stable but low paying job and a family - but it's a miracle he's still alive.
I'd go even further to make a case that the market and its reputation system works similarly well for the aforementioned ground level networks, if you can find them. Read the room, be a desirable client and behave with everyone's interests in mind and you will likely never have an issue. Good business is good business regardless of whether it happens online or in person I suppose.
As an aside I often wonder to what degree the prevalence of onion markets over the past decade have impacted the availability of weed within these offline distribution networks. My anecdotal experience from my legal-weed-desert neck of the US has been a slow growth of offerings and inventory stability and a 20-40% reduction in prices. No idea how much of that is due to the online markets.
https://moonwlkr.com/pages/moonwlkr-delta-8
> Under state law, that first day for adult sales at licensed dispensaries is supposed to come next month. The enabling marijuana legalization legislation signed into law by Gov. Phil Murphy last year directs the CRC to begin adult use marijuana sales before Feb. 22, with 30-day notice beginning Jan. 23.
> But there's a catch. The CRC is yet to issue any licenses for recreational marijuana sales, so even if sales are approved as of Feb. 22, there won't be any dispensaries selling it.
Customs on the other hand...
Though if it's small volume they will often just send you a scary letter in the mail, especially if it's just sketchy looking pills. Or if the scammer is smart they'll just send you the letter and take your money ! Or at least that's what SWIM said from my wasted 20s. LMFAO I miss earlier internet sometimes
It helps explain all aspects of the drug trade through the lens of business.
One of the most fascinating takeaways was how they handle “contract enforcement” in the absence of a legal system or courts (hint: Violence)
I recall an anecdote that Mexican cartels would hire Mexicans —- and not Dutch —- in order to serve as drug mules smuggling product into Amsterdam. Dutch mules would get caught less often, but Mexicans were much less likely to steal the drugs entirely. Because when you sign up to be a mule they take down the names and addresses of your entire family (nearby), and will kill them if you steal the product. Contract enforcement.
[1] http://www.daviddfriedman.com/Legal%20Systems/LegalSystemsCo...
My embassy was quite helpful in negotiating with the guards to get me in a "VIP" cell, which was a room within the cell run by some Iranians. They said if I paid them a certain sum, I'd be under their wing and they'd protect me.
Couple days later one of them woke me up and asked me to check if I had any cigarettes missing, which I did (not that I cared much). Someone had seen a Russian guy take some of my smokes while I was asleep and told the "boss". They went and beat the crap out of him.
The Iranians also had a line to the cleaning crew who would pass in front of the cell once a day. Every morning you could place an order for (almost) anything you wanted from the outside world. They'd take the payments, write it all down and pass it to the cleaning crew through the bars of the cell who would deliver it all the next day. So while most of our cell mates fought over bowls of rice, in the VIP room we had feasts of curries, fruit, soft drinks. It was like a banquet every day.
The main Iranian guy even had Russian girls come over but they couldn't enter the cells.
The day I got out one of them approached me and ever so gently and politely asked me "You are going home yes? Could I please have your towel?". He could have just taken it along with anything else I had but he stuck to the rules.
So yeah, these guys definitely had a legal system!
I hope you'll find it as interesting as I did!
Book: http://www.daviddfriedman.com/Legal%20Systems/LegalSystemsCo...
Talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nOB2qxRO5vQ
[Ed. Seems I'm late, but I'll leave the comment up for the video link.]
There's an interesting discussion/description in "The Machinery of Freedom", a book about anarchocapitalism.
It's freely available online - http://www.daviddfriedman.com/The_Machinery_of_Freedom_.pdf
and now we just have contingency
Not sure why you assumed they don't exist already. There are apparently many. Google Scholar that shit.
I'll go try that tho!
I find it interesting that the same thing can be achieved online but without the violence that is necessary in person. It's definitely a different space.
1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RjwnDF2dRgI&list=PLBEIBBdgAO...
Most companies prefer this, as it's faster and more efficient than the judicial system.
First, waiver of class-action rights. This is a big deal because there's a cottage industry of enterprising lawyers who do find a couple main plaintiffs, generate a suit on behalf of a large class against a deep-pocketed defendant, and settle for something around a dollar per class member plus millions in legal fees.
Second is a limitation on discovery and subpoena rights for plaintiffs. In a traditional court setting, you may be allowed to force a company to turn over extensive communication records and other documents, corporate executives to testify or be deposed, and even burden non-party witnesses (eg, part suppliers).
In many jurisdictions, companies that wish to use binding arbitration have to pay the entirety of the significant fees to fund the arbitration system (and in a timely manner). It's still worthwhile for them to do so, even if they aren't tipping the scales of justice one micrometer. With the exact same outcome as a court case, the arbitration fees are fully worth it to avoid discovery, better protect executives from being forced to testify, dodge class-action fishing expeditions, etc.
Only in theory, or maybe if you take averages. As soon as you give people rights (to see the evidence against them, to confront witnesses, etc.) you have to create processes to manage those rights, and it ends up resembling the judicial system.
I had a friend go through a wrongful termination arbitration, and it took two years. Lawyers were present on both sides; the larger party could (and did) stretch out the process so as to bankrupt the smaller one; settlement negotiations were interminable. It's not clear to me that a court case would have been appreciably longer.
NOT! You have to get a lawyer, and it drags on and on.
This guy was actually part of a consortium of similar lawyers all over the world.
These disputes are completely normal. The amounts of money involved in these contracts is huge; and it's impossible to write into a contract every detail of what might go wrong. So when something goes wrong that isn't written into the letter of the contract, arbitrators pick up the slack. Contract arbitration is generally a paper exercise. The parties don't normally face-off in a courtroom.
There are even internationally-agreed standards of jurisprudence concerned with this kind of arbitration. The specific rules to be used willl be written into the contract.
https://uncitral.un.org/en/texts/arbitration/contractualtext...
I sympathize because, who wants to shell out $100. But even big name news outlets all use xss.in, you see it everywhere, precisely because it's free and anyone can join. Nothing wrong with using it really, just something amusing I've noticed
The irony is that real world is increasingly moving away from that, toward the "everyone for themselves, nothing matters" chaos.
> social harmony and the rule of law
The association between the story and social harmony seems plausible, but actually superficial.
Social harmony would be that people involuntarily work together without an authority, and reached mutual agreement on their dispute. To me, it is a sign of social conflicts that dark web actors need arbitration.
Although that by itself matches our impression that dark web actors are lawless individuals should be punished. More ironically, the story actually shows that they are not lawless in the absolute sense. They just breakd the laws majority of the society abides by (or the majority actually do not even realize exits).
> rule of law
You know, rule of law is more of a political term nowadays. It refers to a western style of political organization framework centered on written laws and a voting process to revising them, and many other subtle details.
Is arbitration on darkweb an example of rule by law?
I tend to say no. Arbiter is necessary in all steps, and they seem are not codifying their "laws" for dealing with the future occrance of similar litigation at all.
People have been saying that for hundreds of years. We tend to romanticize the past.