I don't think there was anything fundamentally unethical about Silk Road (other than the owner very likely attempting to have several people murdered, of course), but the defense is clearly grasping at straws here.
Trial adjourned. There's a lot going on. DHS agent was pursuing Karpeles as late as August 2013. Ulbricht was arrested Oct 2013. Like I wrote in my last article, he went after Ulbricht based on a tip off from an IRS agent in September 2013. Whiplash! Amazing moment later today: in affadavit, DHS agent referred to @a_greenberg's interview of DPR and said it sounded like Mark Karpeles. Recall, this is the same guy who was on a 6 person team to arrest Ulbricht. In Aug '13 he said he had probable cause to suspect Karpeles.
[More tweets] DHS agent acknowledged under cross that he was preparing an affadavit for a warrant to search Karpeles's email. DHS agent's OWN THEORY around early to mid 2013 was that Mt. Gox and Silk Road worked in tandem. Investigation found that Mutum Sigilum, a Karpeles holding, had registered silkroadmarket.org
Whatever one thinks about Silk Road, darknets or drug policy in general (I have issues with all of them) I would hope that Ulbricht could get a better defense than one that seems as farcical as this. I don't know what it would be.
Maybe they're hoping people will think it's too crazy not to be true? The only possible way it isn't a complete joke is if it's true.
I thought the same thing until I read the entirety of the article. As others have pointed out, the DHS investigator Jared DerYeghiayan himself was convinced Mark Karpeles was Roberts as late as 2 months prior to Ulbricht's arrest (and admitted as much under cross-examination). It seems insane, almost far-fetched even, until you consider that DerYeghiayan even went as far as to draft a search warrant for Karpeles' email. If it wasn't at least plausible, any defense attorney who went down this road would be a fool.
Having sat on a jury before, I can guarantee you that this will have at least some impact on the decision. Even if you're convinced the defendant is guilty, the job of the jury is to act as finders of fact, and if sufficient doubt is raised to that end an acquittal is likely. The trial I sat on had a similar event unfold where the law enforcement involved completely screwed up and made some admissions during cross-examination that severely harmed reaching a guilty verdict.
Law enforcement revealing true exculpatory information during cross-examination isn't screwing up -- like all witnesses, their duty is to tell the truth. (Its true that some of them may view their job as getting a conviction, and may view providing the truth as screwing up when it is contrary to that, but its a very bad idea to reinforce that meme.)
The parent comment was phrased somewhat ambiguously, but I think he meant that the law enforcement admitted to screwing up, not that they screwed up by admitting.
As krrrh observed, I wasn't suggesting that they screwed up by mentioning anything. I apologize for not making that obvious. I have a very deep respect for law enforcement, and I'd like to believe that on the whole they're good people. Reports that shed negative light on LEOs are common IMO like other forms of negative news: It's more interesting or captivates more viewers.
That said, it's like anything else. Depending on circumstance, stress, etc., they might make mistakes without thinking much of it. When these mistakes are admitted through cross-examination, then yes, it's a screw up.
On the trial I sat on, one of the most damning admissions also came from a DHS employee who admitted they handled evidence without gloves. The admission in that case wasn't the screw up--violating the number one rule of handling evidence was!
> That said, it's like anything else. Depending on circumstance, stress, etc., they might make mistakes without thinking much of it. When these mistakes are admitted through cross-examination, then yes, it's a screw up.
Whether it is admitted under cross-examination is irrelevant to whether it is a screw-up. (Though it is relevant to whether the screw-up is compounded by, or transformed into, an abuse of government power. Because that is what happens when it is material to the case and concealed, actively or passively.)
> Whether it is admitted under cross-examination is irrelevant to whether it is a screw-up.
I'm having a difficult time following your line of reasoning. I think it's completely relevant.
If a LEO mishandles evidence or otherwise makes a mistake (henceforth referred to as "screw-up"), and then admits such a thing under cross-examination, it's perfectly relevant to the trial. In nearly all circumstances, those sorts of screw-ups are completely accidental (stress, overworked, etc.), and are extremely important to the jury's decision-making process.
You know, I just read back through my original comment, and it seems to me that you're conflating two separate points I made. So, perhaps I should reiterate and clarify in case my original comment was misleading:
1) DerYeghiayan's admission was not a screw-up. You were confusing this with an example I used for purposes of illustration in my second paragraph. The agent is going to tell the truth, obviously, but he is not going to volunteer that information without first being asked while under oath (it's not his obligation to do so). Again, not a screw-up. He just happened to share a detail that may possibly affect the jury's decision.
This is also unrelated to point #2.
2) Where I mentioned screw-up was with regards to a trial I sat on, which I offered up tangentially as an example of mistakes law enforcement can make that undoubtedly change the direction of the trial toward an acquittal. During that specific trial, DHS border patrol agents admitted they handled the evidence without gloves--that was a complete and total screw-up. In fact, it was so much so, that I distinctly remember a comment made during cross-examination of the special agent assigned by the sheriff's office. When he caught wind of what the DHS agents did, his first reaction was "Crap! We screwed up."
So yes, mistakes can be made, and yes they're completely relevant to the decision-making process of a jury.
Another example comes from the same jury pool I was assigned to, but on a trial I wasn't part of. The trial lasted, as I understand from other jurors, for the whole of about 3-4 hours. During cross-examination, one of the LEOs involved inadvertently admitted details related to another case or circumstance involving the defendant (the exact details I can't remember), and resulted in the defense attorney immediately seeking council with the judge, and the judge declaring a mistrial due to the nature of the material the officer shared while under oath.
So, no, I don't agree. It's completely relevant, especially when mistakes are admitted or committed under cross-examination. (The latter being a circumstance of biasing the jury while under cross-examination.)
Now, it's likely I'm completely missing your point, in which case I'd greatly appreciate it if you could elaborate, because I have a strong suspicion that our disagreement may be based on us thinking about or arguing two entirely unrelated points. Indeed, we might be more in agreement than not, but I'm sincerely having trouble following why you're caught up with this notion that mistakes of this category are irrelevant to a jury trial.
I think that it may have been just a misphrasing in your post that I responded to, but:
> If a LEO mishandles evidence or otherwise makes a mistake (henceforth referred to as "screw-up"), and then admits such a thing under cross-examination, it's perfectly relevant to the trial.
I didn't say "whether an LEO screws up is irrelevant to the trial".
I said "whether it [the mishandling of evidence] is admitted under cross examination is irrelevant to whether it [again, the mishandling of evidence] is a screw up."
In response to your statement: "When these mistakes are admitted through cross-examination, then yes, it's a screw up."
But I don't think that statement is, from your subsequent post, what you actually meant there (though I'm not clear what else that sentence could mean.)
A friend of mine once commented that high treason is one of the only crimes on the books where the penalty for attempting it is infinitely higher than for succeeding, mainly because if you do succeed, you are then in charge of the country.
The Socratic position of accepting judicial punishment doesn't make sense if you have anything you want to do with your life other than making a political point. If you think making that point, with its immense opportunity cost, is the most important remaining thing you can do, fine, but you can't assume everyone is at that place in their lives.
I don't think someone should be expected to sacrifice everything on principle in order to be justified in refusing to comply with an unjust law.
> "The Socratic position of accepting judicial punishment doesn't make sense if you have anything you want to do with your life other than making a political point."
More than that, it also doesn't hold water if you consider the possibility that sacrificing yourself isn't the best way to further your political goals.
Even if your cause is more important than everything else in your life combined, you should not allow yourself to be neutralized (jailed, or made to commit suicide) if it does not further your goal to a greater extent than anything else you could do. "Live to fight another day" is in full effect in nearly all situations.
This argument can be applied to any transaction engaged in by people who are drunk or high or otherwise in a state of modified consciousness. Is it unethical to sell Cheetos because the buyer might be a stoner who is high and not in a state to give consent to the transaction?
Well they consented to get intoxicated so they should deal with the consequences. If what you say were true, intoxicated people couldn't even buy a bottle of water because that requires entering into a contract which you claim they cannot.
if you followed the story closely there is essentially no reason to believe the owner ever attempted to have anyone killed. The substantial evidence points directly to him bluffing in order to scare someone. I wrote a short summary on reddit a while back that you can read here https://www.reddit.com/r/silkroadnews/comments/1nndtk/ulbric...
Assault: "Intentionally putting another person in reasonable apprehension of an imminent harmful or offensive contact. No intent to cause physical injury needs to exist, and no physical injury needs to result. So defined in tort law and the criminal statutes of some states."
It's true. In many states, you are guilty of assault if you threaten someone sufficiently, even if you had no intention of carrying out the threat. It's true for a number of violent crimes.
Not sure why the GP got downvoted for stating facts, though I don't know the details of the murder-for-hire plot, so perhaps it somehow doesn't pertain in that particular case.
Regardless, it's a legit thing. So be careful about threatening people with bodily harm.
I take issue with this characterization. Unless there is a much, much more realistic piece of evidence yet to emerge, I regard this allegation as very unlikely.
And if it's not true, and all DPR did was help people to circumvent laws prohibiting transactions of prohibited substances, then he's a libertarian hero.
This headline seems unbelievable, but if all the evidence in the article it is actually real, it does cast some reasonable doubt.
An alternative which hasn't been discussed yet is that maybe Karpeles was the Dread Pirate Roberts and then Ulbricht was. It has long been theorized that, like the original name from The Princess Bride, the title "Dread Pirate Roberts" was passed from person to person. DerYeghiayan seems to have had some reason to believe that Karpeles was DPR, while the prosecution seems to have reason to believe that Ulbricht is DPR. Why not both?
He also claims they passed it back to him immediately before the bust. Only slightly more effective than the "I was holding it for a friend" legal defense.
Only if you're prosecuting. If you're defending yourself, all you have to do is make it sound believable given the circumstances. A jury can find you not guilty just because they don't like the law. To defend yourself in a U.S. court you technically wouldn't need any evidence to substantiate any of your claims just so long as the jury buys it.
Are you claiming that jury members select a verdict at random? That there is no thought process happening in each of the individuals on the jury? Regardless of whether the juror's beliefs correspond to the actual reality of the case, that individual will still require some reason (evidence) for believing a particular thing. If you are trying to convince a juror of something, you will need to interact with that individual on such a level that you provide them with sufficient evidence for them to believe the claim you want them to believe.
This is separate from the rule of law in the US where a prosecution must prove its allegations beyond a reasonable doubt. It is true that a defense is not required to make any claims or present any evidence. However, depending on the jurors selected, in order to instill or preserve a reasonable doubt, some claims may need to be made. In order for a juror to believe a claim, that individual juror will need to find or receive some evidence sufficient for them to believe the claim.
Out of the millions of trials that have happened I would not be surprised if at least one jury that was undecided simply went with a coin flip or other random means.
Historically this may even have been a unusual, but not that uncommon practice. aka trusting in 'the gods' or some such.
We have to assume not until/unless a lawyer shows up and says otherwise.
Rumors to the contrary, we do have a right to free speech, so you can say anything you want in a courtroom without being arrested, unless it causes immeidate danger (e.g. yelling "FIRE!").
When jury selection happens, I have heard that you can be rejected from being on the jury if you say (essentially) that you don't agree with the law. Not agreeing with the law is precisely what leads to jury nullification.
Good point. And I'm sure if the court is in session, talking out of turn about anything (including jury nullification) would get you held in contempt of court.
So, saying you'll be arrested for talking about jury nullification in court doesn't really give an accurate picture. Though it is probably technically true.
Burden of proof in U.S. criminal cases often seems to be more of a suggestion than an actual mandate. With the way the legal system is structured, it's effectively guilty until proven innocent.
"A jury can find you not guilty just because they don't like the law."
This is not really the case. It would be tough to find all jurors didn't LIKE the law. The people sitting on the jury were asked questions during the selection process to make sure they are neutral. The question is, do they understand the law and the issues at hand.
The prosecuting team bears the burden of proof (obviously). The prosecutors are required to prove their version of the actual events. This means that the proposition that is being presented before the judge / jury by the prosecution must be proven to the extent that there could be no reasonable doubt that the defendant is guilty. The defense needs to convince the criminal jury so they are unable to find beyond a reasonable doubt, that this guy is guilty.
The defense seems to be casting doubt for the jury to consider from the get-go. Well played.
Do you honestly think that 12 random people are going to understand the law better than say a 3 judge panel?
There are a few benefits as for example Juries are harder to bribe and sequestered juries are harder to tamper with. But, the core issue and why they were considered so important is there a check on unjust laws or even just laws unjustly applied.
I may have misunderstood the defense, but how does that make any sense as a defense? You don't stop being guilty of running an illegal drug marketplace just because you pass the running of the illegal drug marketplace on to someone else.
That's the same information. That the DHS agent believed they had probable cause is not a stupendously high bar. They also apparently never actually arrested Karpeles in relation to Silk Road (so perhaps said agent backed off that belief...).
are immunity deals really that stupidly phrased? I'd guess the standard boilerplate would protect against that? Then again I remember this exact scenario in an episode of The Practice ... so maybe not :)
For those not reading the article, please note this isn't just a claim made by the defense. This came out of cross examination of a DHS agent.
"You thought you had probable cause that Mark Karpeles
was intimately involved, as the head of Silk
Road, correct?" Dratel asked Homeland Security agent
Jared Der-Yeghiayan.
"By the contents of that affidavit—yes," he answered.
So in layman's terms, would I be right in saying that the defense is effectively saying that the prosecution is taking a "shotgun approach?" In a more obvious claim, they are said to be pulling random people off the street?
If that's the case it's a fascinating defense, I'd love to be able to watch it live.
I don't think that's accurate. The defense has only identified one other person investigated by the police, which doesn't make for much of a "shotgun". I think the defense is probably doing one of or both of the following:
(1) The defense is trying to impeach the testimony of the aforementioned DHS agent. The unstated implication is that if the agent changes his opinion about the identity of DPR, then his opinions aren't very reliable and shouldn't be taken seriously by the jury.
(2) If the underlying reasons for this DHS agent's belief that Karpeles was DPR are still valid, then the defense could use those reasons to show reasonable doubt as to the true identity of DPR. Basically, "if the DHS agent doubted that DPR was Ulbricht, then it's reasonable you doubt that too!"
No, in layman's terms: they're bullshitting in a desperate , last-ditch attempt, because any sane defense has a snowball's chance in hell (even less than this insane Scooby Doo-style 'revelation') and (apparently) the prosecutor didn't agree to any plea bargain (because let's face it, anything less than the 20 years this guy is looking at would be an awesome deal for him). Is there really anyone who seriously thinks this guy is not going to convicted?
Absolutely; this isn't really a defence in so much as it is attempting to nullify the prosecution evidence. They can get away with the argument it's introducing reasonable doubt that Ulbricht is the only candidate for being DPR, whilst the ulterior motive is really to establish the DHS agent as an unreliable witness.
You honestly think he didn't do it? Look, I don't know the guy, and all I have to go on is what I read online, but I would have believed Hans Reiser over this guy.
It mentions how an undercover agent was able to correlate the the times DPR was logged in to times that Ross Ulbricht was on his laptop in public places immediately prior to his arrest.
Its certainly not 100% conclusive or anything but is it corroborating evidence that the prosecution is using to suggest he is guilty. Personally, I'm waiting to make up my mind on the matter of his innocence until the trial brings forward more evidence.
That is precisely the point of the court. To determine the truth so that the rest of us can know. In another more recent case (Oscar Pistorius) I was completely horrified that practically everyone had concluded that he was guilty before the court had come to a conclusion. I've come to realise that the majority of the human race wants answers so desperately, that they will accept the wrong ones and defend them: be it science or a court case.
"That is precisely the point of the court. To determine the truth so that the rest of us can know."
Uh, no, of course courts don't determine 'the truth', they decide what should be taken as the truth in the context of a legal question, and how the law applies to that. There is a widespread misconception about 'assumption of innocence', and it's that it applied any further than 'the judge should let himself be convinced that a defendant is guilty, not that that defendant is not guilty'. The rest of the public has nothing to do with that. For example, let's say you and I are in an elevator with nobody around and no cameras. Then I punch you in the face. Do we need a judge to tell us whether or not I punched you? Of course not, we both know what happened, and that is the truth. If you stumble out of the elevator with a bloody face and the impression of 4 knuckles on your cheek bone, should everybody who sees you stumble out then say I didn't do it until some judge rules I didn't? Of course not, it's blindingly obvious I did it, nothing to do with 'presumption of innocence', and nothing to do with 'wanting answers so desperately'.
So there is an investigation, and during the course of the investigation, there are several theories about what went down and who is who, and in the end it turns out that most of them were incorrect and only one is correct? What a shocking revelation! Who would have thought that!
Would that also mean the defense would be barred from mentioning it? If they're approach is to prove that DPR was multiple people over time it would probably help them to talk about nature of the name in the context of the movie
Why would the judge do that? It's up to the jury to determine - to the best of their ability - whether the "DPR" moniker is really a reference to the multi-headed nature of the group, or whether it's irrelevant. But either way, they should know the context for the name.
It's almost a requirement in a criminal defense case to have an alternative culprit, just the same way that it's almost required to have a motive and a weapon in a homicide case. The defense needs to raise a reasonable doubt that Ulbriicht wasn't the criminal and that's best done by presenting an alternative culprit.
There are no "homicide cases" in court. That might be term used by some cops to indicate a case involving a body, but even then it is ambiguous as cops often don't know whether the body was "killed" or whether they killed themselves. Homicide just means a killing by someone else (suicide is not homicide). State execution is also considered homicide even though there is no chargeable crime.
Actual crimes from homicide range from the various types of murder, manslaughter, felony-murder, Misdemeanor-manslaughter, negligence causing death, vehicular manslaughter ... and others I cannot remember off the top of my head.
I agree that weapons are a good thing to have but are far from necessary, especially when there aren't any (murder through neglect). Motives are equally unnecessary. Google "one-punch murder". You don't need a motive to be guilty, unless by motive you mean "mens rea", a very different concept.
Intent (or "mens rea"), not motive. Some killers don't have a motive; see the Louisiana murderer who confessed to killing a child who came to his door to sell candy -- he confessed, saying only that he "had a bad day." Motives are used to explain why the accused might have done something, but aren't necessary for the legal definition of a crime.
In some cases, murder does not require mens rea, when the accused shows "extreme indifference to the value of human life" (e.g, "depraved heart" manslaughter). The classic legal example is someone who sits at the top of a skyscraper idly tossing bricks off the side; they might not intend to kill someone, but their callous and wanton disregard for human life means that in most jurisdictions they're going down for murder.
Murder always requires mens rea. Crimes that do not require mens rea are called "strict liability crimes" but murder is definitely never one of those.
>In some cases, murder does not require mens rea, when the accused shows "extreme indifference to the value of human life"
In such a case, the extreme indifference IS the mens rea. The prosecution must prove the existence of that extreme indifference. Murder without mens rea would mean that the prosecution wouldn't need to even discuss indifference.
"Voluntary manslaughter" is a killing that would otherwise be murder, but because of a recognized mitigating factor is punished as something less. It has all the elements of murder (killing with aforethought) but we choose not to punish it as such. For instance: The killing was provoked.
"Involuntary manslaughter" is a totally different thing in that there is no malice aforethought. Usually these are cased of responsible people failing to act, such as a life guard watching someone drown who they should save.
I would expect that a lifeguard watching someone drown would qualify as depraved indifference and would be tried as second-degree murder (in most US jurisdictions).
But their argument is that Ulbricht founded Silk Road of his own accord, then handed it to the "real DPR" months later. (Only to have it handed back to him just in time to be arrested!)
He sure did it awful quickly, the site also credited "- Silk Road Staff" at the bottom of the message. Then there's downtime messages from time to time, it seems rather unlikely that MK is DPR but there very well might be something behind this. The domain wasn't registered to John Smith, it was registered in the name of a company that Mark Karpeles owns and pointing to Mark Karpeles name servers.
That's really bad reasoning on the part of the investigators. Registering a .org domain name similar to the name of your secret underground site is a stupid and completely pointless thing to do.
Both Ulbricht and Karpales are known for doing stupid and pointless things, though (hiring fake hitmen with hilarious emails, and writing ssh servers in php, respectively).
The "Dread Pirate Roberts" moniker is from a (wonderful) movie called "The Princess Bride". In it, the hero assumes the mantle of the "Dread Pirate Roberts", and is at least the fourth successor to the title. It's an interesting factor in this case, because the choice of name hints that the "Dread Pirate Roberts" handle was chosen so it could be passed from person to person.
I'm glad to see someone else thinking along those same lines. Unlikely, but the possibilities in this case are hilariously endless.
The odd thing is that it does raise some suspicions with Mt. Gox, the bitcoin theft, Silk Road, etc. As moyix points out below[1], Karpeles apparently registered silkroadmarket.org.
Did he register silkroadmarket after the known existence of silk road? If so it could just be a domain squatting attempt for marketing purposes (e.g. "thinking of using silkroad? come first to mtgox, the best place to convert your $ to Btc".)
silkroadmarket.org was registered on February 28, 2011 [1]. According to a forum post [2], Silk Road was launched around three weeks before March 1, 2011.
It's signed by "-Silk Road staff" at the bottom. If this site was really owned by Karpeles, then he definitely had something to do with Silk Road, whether or not he was DPR.
Browsing through other dates it was cached reveals that it was regularly updated with details about the SR registration being closed and server outages.
As far as I can tell, the downtime message [1] originated on silkroadmarket.org [2-6]. It doesn't look like Karpeles could have reposted it from somewhere else--he has to have been involved in the Silk Road's operations if he was behind the site.
It's also worth noting that DPR linked to silkroadmarket.org in his signature as the official way to get to site [7].
It's possible that Karpeles knew that a mainstream dark market that used bitcoin would increase the adoption of bitcoin. He may have tried to make that happen by registering the domain and promoting it.
true. this is like indicting twitter because someone posted criminal sites downtime notes.
remember that SR was probably 90% of the transactions, so they had lots of interest in "working" with it. maybe a more apt analogy would be PayPal posting notices about ebay having troubles (before one acquired the other) since it was the source of all transactions
> true. this is like indicting twitter because someone posted criminal sites downtime notes.
Defense attorneys specialize in shedding just enough doubt over the defendant's involvement that the jury won't reach a conviction. It doesn't always work (hence why trials sometimes seem so unpredictable to those of us watching from the outside), but when the burden of proof is "beyond a reasonable doubt," any substantial doubt may be enough to convince the jury to acquit.
This trial could go either way. So it's fascinating to watch.
Kalyhost was one of the first (the first?) VPS provider to accept Bitcoins. If Ulbricht didn't want to pay for his server with a credit card, he probably would have ended up being a customer of Kalyhost and MtGox together.
And I guess that's the point; if you can create that doubt, even if it's ridiculous, in the minds of the people who are deciding Ulbricht's guilt or innocence then you've won.
The jury selection process is so skewed... hell, the juror creation process (growing up in the United States, watching hundreds or thousands of hours of cop/courtroom shows), that you can't make any reasonable predictions about what will happen.
There could indeed be real doubt, they'll convict anyway (I didn't like the way his eyes looked... all criminal-y).
> The jury selection process is so skewed... hell, the juror creation process (growing up in the United States, watching hundreds or thousands of hours of cop/courtroom shows), that you can't make any reasonable predictions about what will happen.
There's so much truth in this. If you're a US citizen reading this and have never served on a jury, I'd highly recommend not getting out of it. It'll shed a lot of light on the process, and you might be surprised.
> There could indeed be real doubt, they'll convict anyway (I didn't like the way his eyes looked... all criminal-y).
> There could be no doubt, but they'll acquit.
This reminds me of a trial I sat on. During deliberations, a couple of the women discussed how they didn't like the way the defendant would occasionally turn and look at them. They described him as "creepy." Given the circumstances, we were all convinced he was guilty, but we go caught up in a discussion about appearances for a while.
Yet we voted to acquit.
There were a number of reasons why we came to this conclusion, but the executive summary was essentially: Law enforcement mishandled evidence (without gloves!), key witnesses couldn't remember specific details of the defendant's involvement (3 years after the fact...), and 3 of the 4 expert witnesses were called by the defense--that should tell you something. Key pieces of evidence hadn't been admitted in the trial, either, and all we were left with was a couple of boxes of paraphernalia and a stack of photographs. The entire trial was messy.
I remember from the opening arguments thinking "Oh, this will be easy. Open-and-shut case, he'll probably be found guilty, and that's final." My mind completely changed in the first 30 minutes.
Aren't you really just saying that sometimes the juries get results that you wouldn't agree with? If you think something is "real doubt" and they don't, that's not an objective fact.
Wikipedia doesn't cite any examples or references for the claim that it's illegal to blame somebody else. In the US, you have pretty wide latitude to say what you want in court.
The closest example I can think of is Amanda Knox, who was prosecuted for slander for suggesting that the police investigators didn't do their job properly as part of her defense. That happened in Italy, however.
> Edit: Seriously? It's an informative post, why the downvote hate?
This is getting to be a rather annoying issue with HN for the past six months or so. You will often get 2 or 3 downvotes very soon after posting, for no apparent reason, and seldom will anyone actually take the time to make a post explaining their objection to your post and why they downvoted it (and, FYI and FWIW, those of you who downvote posts solely to express disagreement, are dumb assholes and you don't belong here - GTFO).
For what it's worth, if I see grey text now I reflexively give it an upvote regardless of content. The voting system here is so dysfunctional now, that all text should at least be black.
Edit: And, yes, 'ironic' downvotes for talking about the downvoting brigade in the first place, are the best kind of downvotes. They do not stop me from posting about it - I take downvotes on HN as an indicator that I'm on the right track, so vote away.
>This is getting to be a rather annoying issue with HN for the past six months or so.
Yeah, I agree, but I think it's been more like a year now. The immediate downvotes are so striking in their regularity that I suspected they may be automated (now I think it's unlikely).
So to the GP: I wouldn't worry about quick downvotes. Unless your post is obviously trolling or a low-content Reddit-like comment (which yours was not), it's highly likely it will be upvoted back into the black (and indeed, yours is in the black now).
So far, they seem to be claiming that US law enforcement thought someone else was a viable suspect -- and they've got internal LE memos to back that up.
While really valid, you also have to take into account what kind of hosting services are provided on Tor. Of course, one could host the solution themselves.
It was self-hosted. The only real hosting service ever on the darknet was Freedom Hosting, and its operator got busted (for having customers who hosted CP.)
Do they have the code for both? In that case, and if they're written by the same person, this can be very easy to determine, e.g. due to code reuse across projects.
If this is true then nearly all of bitcoin's growth over the last 3 years can be directly attributable to Mark Karpeles, either in the form of outright price manipulation, or the running of illegal goods marketplaces.
"Centrally controlled" is not the same thing as one guy who has a very large stake.
Bitcoin, by definition, is not "centrally controlled." It doesn't matter how many coins any entity controls, there's nothing that it could do to actually break the system or remove the inherent value of bitcoin. The fact that there are thousands and thousands of miners and nodes around the world protecting the ledger (the blockchain) is what makes bitcoin so groundbreaking.
I wonder if this play will hold up? When they busted Ulbricht at a public library, didn't they catch him in the act of talking to agent DerYeghiayan via Pidgin who told Ross to check out a support ticket? I thought they had screenshots of the chat as well as Ulbricht being logged into the site itself. They have conclusively linked Ulbricht to the site, however, they have failed to conclusively prove that he is the mastermind of the site itself and that there weren't others involved.
So my limited understanding here and what this case is actually about is that it is not so much trying to prove that Ulbricht had anything to do with the site (because the association was proven), but rather who actually was the mastermind behind the site (and pocketing large sums of cash from transactions). Seems association with such a site would carry a lesser charge than being the one who was profiting off of the marketplace and behind its original conception (this is my limited understanding and it could be wrong).
This story is absolutely insane, it will be interesting to see where this case heads. From what I gather, the bust in the library, screenshots of the chat and admin panel of the site and supposedly a few scrunched up pieces of paper found in the bin of Ulbrichts home are all they have (that we know about). There is nothing that actually proves or disproves that either Ulbricht or Karpeles, are the owners of Silk Road.
Now we just need the defence to come out and claim that Karpeles is actually Satoshi Nakamoto and then we've got ourselves a super interesting case. There is undoubtedly a movie script in here somewhere once the case is finished.
Keep in mind they also claim he was conspiring to murder, but haven't bothered to charge him with that.
The likely explanation here is that they exaggerate everything to some insane degree for exciting press conferences (and to subtly poison potential jurors).
What the heck are you talking about? The defense is based on law enforcement's own investigations pointing at a different culprit. How is that in any way related to a defense based on confusing the jury with a non sequitur?
Not one but two (nearly identical) references to "The Princess Bride" have been flagkilled. I understand not wanting to devolve into reddit, but is HN really so humorless? This is life imitating art, people. In this context, such references are 100% on-point.
He wasn't the real Dread Pirate Roberts either. The real Roberts has been retired fifteen years and living like a king in Patagonia.
And if I may digress into some meta-HN analysis, the original comment received about 7 upvotes in the few minutes after it was posted (i.e. when it was near the top). But when newer comments came in and it was near the bottom, that's when the downvoting started.
One thing I haven't see in the legal analysis: If Ulbricht is guilty of the things that the defense has stipulated (building and running SilkRoad for some period of time), doesn't that mean he's admitted to most of the relevant charges?
I'm not sure what the "I'm not the kingpin" defense actually buys.
It depends on the specific acts he's being charged with, if he can create reasonable doubts to that then he's not guilty. 'Operating SilkRoad' isn't a crime, trafficking drugs is.
Depending on one's interpretation of common carrier, it's the same as the difference between "delivering email from user a to user b" and "conspiring with terrorists"
249 comments
[ 4.3 ms ] story [ 119 ms ] threadTrial adjourned. There's a lot going on. DHS agent was pursuing Karpeles as late as August 2013. Ulbricht was arrested Oct 2013. Like I wrote in my last article, he went after Ulbricht based on a tip off from an IRS agent in September 2013. Whiplash! Amazing moment later today: in affadavit, DHS agent referred to @a_greenberg's interview of DPR and said it sounded like Mark Karpeles. Recall, this is the same guy who was on a 6 person team to arrest Ulbricht. In Aug '13 he said he had probable cause to suspect Karpeles.
Maybe they're hoping people will think it's too crazy not to be true? The only possible way it isn't a complete joke is if it's true.
Having sat on a jury before, I can guarantee you that this will have at least some impact on the decision. Even if you're convinced the defendant is guilty, the job of the jury is to act as finders of fact, and if sufficient doubt is raised to that end an acquittal is likely. The trial I sat on had a similar event unfold where the law enforcement involved completely screwed up and made some admissions during cross-examination that severely harmed reaching a guilty verdict.
That said, it's like anything else. Depending on circumstance, stress, etc., they might make mistakes without thinking much of it. When these mistakes are admitted through cross-examination, then yes, it's a screw up.
On the trial I sat on, one of the most damning admissions also came from a DHS employee who admitted they handled evidence without gloves. The admission in that case wasn't the screw up--violating the number one rule of handling evidence was!
Whether it is admitted under cross-examination is irrelevant to whether it is a screw-up. (Though it is relevant to whether the screw-up is compounded by, or transformed into, an abuse of government power. Because that is what happens when it is material to the case and concealed, actively or passively.)
I'm having a difficult time following your line of reasoning. I think it's completely relevant.
If a LEO mishandles evidence or otherwise makes a mistake (henceforth referred to as "screw-up"), and then admits such a thing under cross-examination, it's perfectly relevant to the trial. In nearly all circumstances, those sorts of screw-ups are completely accidental (stress, overworked, etc.), and are extremely important to the jury's decision-making process.
You know, I just read back through my original comment, and it seems to me that you're conflating two separate points I made. So, perhaps I should reiterate and clarify in case my original comment was misleading:
1) DerYeghiayan's admission was not a screw-up. You were confusing this with an example I used for purposes of illustration in my second paragraph. The agent is going to tell the truth, obviously, but he is not going to volunteer that information without first being asked while under oath (it's not his obligation to do so). Again, not a screw-up. He just happened to share a detail that may possibly affect the jury's decision.
This is also unrelated to point #2.
2) Where I mentioned screw-up was with regards to a trial I sat on, which I offered up tangentially as an example of mistakes law enforcement can make that undoubtedly change the direction of the trial toward an acquittal. During that specific trial, DHS border patrol agents admitted they handled the evidence without gloves--that was a complete and total screw-up. In fact, it was so much so, that I distinctly remember a comment made during cross-examination of the special agent assigned by the sheriff's office. When he caught wind of what the DHS agents did, his first reaction was "Crap! We screwed up."
So yes, mistakes can be made, and yes they're completely relevant to the decision-making process of a jury.
Another example comes from the same jury pool I was assigned to, but on a trial I wasn't part of. The trial lasted, as I understand from other jurors, for the whole of about 3-4 hours. During cross-examination, one of the LEOs involved inadvertently admitted details related to another case or circumstance involving the defendant (the exact details I can't remember), and resulted in the defense attorney immediately seeking council with the judge, and the judge declaring a mistrial due to the nature of the material the officer shared while under oath.
So, no, I don't agree. It's completely relevant, especially when mistakes are admitted or committed under cross-examination. (The latter being a circumstance of biasing the jury while under cross-examination.)
Now, it's likely I'm completely missing your point, in which case I'd greatly appreciate it if you could elaborate, because I have a strong suspicion that our disagreement may be based on us thinking about or arguing two entirely unrelated points. Indeed, we might be more in agreement than not, but I'm sincerely having trouble following why you're caught up with this notion that mistakes of this category are irrelevant to a jury trial.
> If a LEO mishandles evidence or otherwise makes a mistake (henceforth referred to as "screw-up"), and then admits such a thing under cross-examination, it's perfectly relevant to the trial.
I didn't say "whether an LEO screws up is irrelevant to the trial".
I said "whether it [the mishandling of evidence] is admitted under cross examination is irrelevant to whether it [again, the mishandling of evidence] is a screw up."
In response to your statement: "When these mistakes are admitted through cross-examination, then yes, it's a screw up."
But I don't think that statement is, from your subsequent post, what you actually meant there (though I'm not clear what else that sentence could mean.)
This is like saying that laws against homesexuality may be unethical, but trying to avoid being punished for being gay is wrong.
edit - And just in case you are reading. Hi Ben, are you really Shakespeare in a wig?
I don't think someone should be expected to sacrifice everything on principle in order to be justified in refusing to comply with an unjust law.
More than that, it also doesn't hold water if you consider the possibility that sacrificing yourself isn't the best way to further your political goals.
Even if your cause is more important than everything else in your life combined, you should not allow yourself to be neutralized (jailed, or made to commit suicide) if it does not further your goal to a greater extent than anything else you could do. "Live to fight another day" is in full effect in nearly all situations.
http://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/assault
Not sure why the GP got downvoted for stating facts, though I don't know the details of the murder-for-hire plot, so perhaps it somehow doesn't pertain in that particular case.
Regardless, it's a legit thing. So be careful about threatening people with bodily harm.
I take issue with this characterization. Unless there is a much, much more realistic piece of evidence yet to emerge, I regard this allegation as very unlikely.
And if it's not true, and all DPR did was help people to circumvent laws prohibiting transactions of prohibited substances, then he's a libertarian hero.
EDIT: Downvote all you want, my friends. I'll take an awesome and timely Princess Bride joke over HN karma any day.
An alternative which hasn't been discussed yet is that maybe Karpeles was the Dread Pirate Roberts and then Ulbricht was. It has long been theorized that, like the original name from The Princess Bride, the title "Dread Pirate Roberts" was passed from person to person. DerYeghiayan seems to have had some reason to believe that Karpeles was DPR, while the prosecution seems to have reason to believe that Ulbricht is DPR. Why not both?
This is separate from the rule of law in the US where a prosecution must prove its allegations beyond a reasonable doubt. It is true that a defense is not required to make any claims or present any evidence. However, depending on the jurors selected, in order to instill or preserve a reasonable doubt, some claims may need to be made. In order for a juror to believe a claim, that individual juror will need to find or receive some evidence sufficient for them to believe the claim.
Historically this may even have been a unusual, but not that uncommon practice. aka trusting in 'the gods' or some such.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Testimony
Rumors to the contrary, we do have a right to free speech, so you can say anything you want in a courtroom without being arrested, unless it causes immeidate danger (e.g. yelling "FIRE!").
When jury selection happens, I have heard that you can be rejected from being on the jury if you say (essentially) that you don't agree with the law. Not agreeing with the law is precisely what leads to jury nullification.
"F@$% you, your honor!”
“Bailiff, please arrest mr. nthj for contempt of court”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contempt_of_court
So, saying you'll be arrested for talking about jury nullification in court doesn't really give an accurate picture. Though it is probably technically true.
I think that they aren't medieval precisely because we have trial by jury, jury nullification, etc.
I would expect trials in non-common-law countries to feel much more medieval.
This is not really the case. It would be tough to find all jurors didn't LIKE the law. The people sitting on the jury were asked questions during the selection process to make sure they are neutral. The question is, do they understand the law and the issues at hand.
The prosecuting team bears the burden of proof (obviously). The prosecutors are required to prove their version of the actual events. This means that the proposition that is being presented before the judge / jury by the prosecution must be proven to the extent that there could be no reasonable doubt that the defendant is guilty. The defense needs to convince the criminal jury so they are unable to find beyond a reasonable doubt, that this guy is guilty.
The defense seems to be casting doubt for the jury to consider from the get-go. Well played.
There are a few benefits as for example Juries are harder to bribe and sequestered juries are harder to tamper with. But, the core issue and why they were considered so important is there a check on unjust laws or even just laws unjustly applied.
That's it!
"Amazing moment later today: in affadavit, DHS agent referred to @a_greenberg's interview of DPR and said it sounded like Mark Karpeles." [1]
"Investigation found that Mutum Sigilum, a Karpeles holding, had registered http://silkroadmarket.org #SilkRoadTrial" [2]
"Karpeles's attorneys met with Baltimore law enforcement, offering to give up the identity of DPR if Karpeles was not charged w crim charges" [3]
[1] https://twitter.com/sarahjeong/status/555844940841115648 [2] https://twitter.com/sarahjeong/status/555821164661321728 [3] https://twitter.com/sarahjeong/status/555821577485713412
If that doesn't work how about retaining Kim Kardasian as part of a legal dreamteam?
If that's the case it's a fascinating defense, I'd love to be able to watch it live.
(1) The defense is trying to impeach the testimony of the aforementioned DHS agent. The unstated implication is that if the agent changes his opinion about the identity of DPR, then his opinions aren't very reliable and shouldn't be taken seriously by the jury.
(2) If the underlying reasons for this DHS agent's belief that Karpeles was DPR are still valid, then the defense could use those reasons to show reasonable doubt as to the true identity of DPR. Basically, "if the DHS agent doubted that DPR was Ulbricht, then it's reasonable you doubt that too!"
I honestly haven't heard anything that classifies as evidence. Even if there is real evidence, all I have is hearsay about that evidence.
So how the fuck would I know?
I bet you have opinions on whether Bill Cosby is really a rapist too, eh?
Edit: dont know about cosby, no indictment or reporting on the evidence eh?
It mentions how an undercover agent was able to correlate the the times DPR was logged in to times that Ross Ulbricht was on his laptop in public places immediately prior to his arrest.
Its certainly not 100% conclusive or anything but is it corroborating evidence that the prosecution is using to suggest he is guilty. Personally, I'm waiting to make up my mind on the matter of his innocence until the trial brings forward more evidence.
That is precisely the point of the court. To determine the truth so that the rest of us can know. In another more recent case (Oscar Pistorius) I was completely horrified that practically everyone had concluded that he was guilty before the court had come to a conclusion. I've come to realise that the majority of the human race wants answers so desperately, that they will accept the wrong ones and defend them: be it science or a court case.
Uh, no, of course courts don't determine 'the truth', they decide what should be taken as the truth in the context of a legal question, and how the law applies to that. There is a widespread misconception about 'assumption of innocence', and it's that it applied any further than 'the judge should let himself be convinced that a defendant is guilty, not that that defendant is not guilty'. The rest of the public has nothing to do with that. For example, let's say you and I are in an elevator with nobody around and no cameras. Then I punch you in the face. Do we need a judge to tell us whether or not I punched you? Of course not, we both know what happened, and that is the truth. If you stumble out of the elevator with a bloody face and the impression of 4 knuckles on your cheek bone, should everybody who sees you stumble out then say I didn't do it until some judge rules I didn't? Of course not, it's blindingly obvious I did it, nothing to do with 'presumption of innocence', and nothing to do with 'wanting answers so desperately'.
Source: my law school training.
It's also possible that the intent is to shed doubt on the prosecution by showing how certain they were previously that Karpeles was DPR.
I find it interesting/bizarre that the judge instructed the jury to not watch The Princess Bride.
Actual crimes from homicide range from the various types of murder, manslaughter, felony-murder, Misdemeanor-manslaughter, negligence causing death, vehicular manslaughter ... and others I cannot remember off the top of my head.
I agree that weapons are a good thing to have but are far from necessary, especially when there aren't any (murder through neglect). Motives are equally unnecessary. Google "one-punch murder". You don't need a motive to be guilty, unless by motive you mean "mens rea", a very different concept.
Really? Wasn't a motive one of the things keeping murder and manslaughter apart? (IANAL.)
In some cases, murder does not require mens rea, when the accused shows "extreme indifference to the value of human life" (e.g, "depraved heart" manslaughter). The classic legal example is someone who sits at the top of a skyscraper idly tossing bricks off the side; they might not intend to kill someone, but their callous and wanton disregard for human life means that in most jurisdictions they're going down for murder.
>In some cases, murder does not require mens rea, when the accused shows "extreme indifference to the value of human life"
In such a case, the extreme indifference IS the mens rea. The prosecution must prove the existence of that extreme indifference. Murder without mens rea would mean that the prosecution wouldn't need to even discuss indifference.
"Involuntary manslaughter" is a totally different thing in that there is no malice aforethought. Usually these are cased of responsible people failing to act, such as a life guard watching someone drown who they should save.
Neither requires a motive, nor does murder.
"One of Karpeles' companies had registered 'Silkroadmarket.org,' leading investigators to consider him as a suspect."
Silk Road launched in February 2011: that's the same month Karpeles (or his associate at Mutum Sigilum) registered the domain
https://who.is/domain-history/silkroadmarket.org
That said, I have no idea what it references.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aHZGqBVBCRw
https://twitter.com/sarahjeong/status/555847465128435712
That said, this is actually a great defense.
The odd thing is that it does raise some suspicions with Mt. Gox, the bitcoin theft, Silk Road, etc. As moyix points out below[1], Karpeles apparently registered silkroadmarket.org.
It's a strange little world.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8896016
[1] http://who.is/domain-history/silkroadmarket.org
[2] https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3984.msg57086#msg570...
http://web.archive.org/web/20110304201806/http://silkroadmar...
It's signed by "-Silk Road staff" at the bottom. If this site was really owned by Karpeles, then he definitely had something to do with Silk Road, whether or not he was DPR.
It's also worth noting that DPR linked to silkroadmarket.org in his signature as the official way to get to site [7].
[1] http://web.archive.org/web/20120128114453/http://silkroadmar...
[2] https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=26644.5;wap2
[3] https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=17556.10;wap2
[4] https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=26644.0
[5] http://www.reddit.com/r/onions/comments/i2mq7/the_silk_road_...
[6] http://dailyanarchist.com/2011/06/21/how-and-why-to-get-to-s...
[7] https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3984.msg57080#msg570...
remember that SR was probably 90% of the transactions, so they had lots of interest in "working" with it. maybe a more apt analogy would be PayPal posting notices about ebay having troubles (before one acquired the other) since it was the source of all transactions
Defense attorneys specialize in shedding just enough doubt over the defendant's involvement that the jury won't reach a conviction. It doesn't always work (hence why trials sometimes seem so unpredictable to those of us watching from the outside), but when the burden of proof is "beyond a reasonable doubt," any substantial doubt may be enough to convince the jury to acquit.
This trial could go either way. So it's fascinating to watch.
It looks like sites hosted there used xta.net nameservers, which were used by tibanne.com back in 2009:
http://who.is/nameserver/ns3.xta.net
There could indeed be real doubt, they'll convict anyway (I didn't like the way his eyes looked... all criminal-y).
There could be no doubt, but they'll acquit.
There's so much truth in this. If you're a US citizen reading this and have never served on a jury, I'd highly recommend not getting out of it. It'll shed a lot of light on the process, and you might be surprised.
> There could indeed be real doubt, they'll convict anyway (I didn't like the way his eyes looked... all criminal-y).
> There could be no doubt, but they'll acquit.
This reminds me of a trial I sat on. During deliberations, a couple of the women discussed how they didn't like the way the defendant would occasionally turn and look at them. They described him as "creepy." Given the circumstances, we were all convinced he was guilty, but we go caught up in a discussion about appearances for a while.
Yet we voted to acquit.
There were a number of reasons why we came to this conclusion, but the executive summary was essentially: Law enforcement mishandled evidence (without gloves!), key witnesses couldn't remember specific details of the defendant's involvement (3 years after the fact...), and 3 of the 4 expert witnesses were called by the defense--that should tell you something. Key pieces of evidence hadn't been admitted in the trial, either, and all we were left with was a couple of boxes of paraphernalia and a stack of photographs. The entire trial was messy.
I remember from the opening arguments thinking "Oh, this will be easy. Open-and-shut case, he'll probably be found guilty, and that's final." My mind completely changed in the first 30 minutes.
It's another thing entirely to falsely claim someone else did it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mistaken_identity#SODDI_Defense
The closest example I can think of is Amanda Knox, who was prosecuted for slander for suggesting that the police investigators didn't do their job properly as part of her defense. That happened in Italy, however.
Meaning, if you claim someone is AKA someone else, that is a provable statement.
Saying someone is an asshole is not a provable statement.
EFF has a good article on this[1], they call it a 'statement of fact'.
From what I understand though, the defense was trying to IMPLY rather than outright, or rather, just bring up a reasonable alternate explanation.
[1]https://www.eff.org/issues/bloggers/legal/liability/defamati...
Edit: Seriously? It's an informative post, why the downvote hate?
If for no other reason, this is necessary so that a trial doesn't devolve into an endless cycle of suit and counter-suit
This is getting to be a rather annoying issue with HN for the past six months or so. You will often get 2 or 3 downvotes very soon after posting, for no apparent reason, and seldom will anyone actually take the time to make a post explaining their objection to your post and why they downvoted it (and, FYI and FWIW, those of you who downvote posts solely to express disagreement, are dumb assholes and you don't belong here - GTFO).
For what it's worth, if I see grey text now I reflexively give it an upvote regardless of content. The voting system here is so dysfunctional now, that all text should at least be black.
Edit: And, yes, 'ironic' downvotes for talking about the downvoting brigade in the first place, are the best kind of downvotes. They do not stop me from posting about it - I take downvotes on HN as an indicator that I'm on the right track, so vote away.
Yeah, I agree, but I think it's been more like a year now. The immediate downvotes are so striking in their regularity that I suspected they may be automated (now I think it's unlikely).
So to the GP: I wouldn't worry about quick downvotes. Unless your post is obviously trolling or a low-content Reddit-like comment (which yours was not), it's highly likely it will be upvoted back into the black (and indeed, yours is in the black now).
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com//2013/11/23/study-suggests-lin...
but they later retracted their claim.
http://www.businessinsider.com/silk-road-satoshi-paper-retra...
> He says the account was randomly assigned to him by the Mt. Gox exchange
So the suggestion that DPR is not Satoshi relates to evidence from Mt Gox.
Bitcoin, by definition, is not "centrally controlled." It doesn't matter how many coins any entity controls, there's nothing that it could do to actually break the system or remove the inherent value of bitcoin. The fact that there are thousands and thousands of miners and nodes around the world protecting the ledger (the blockchain) is what makes bitcoin so groundbreaking.
Except if more than 50% mining capacity is held by a single entity, you know that.
So my limited understanding here and what this case is actually about is that it is not so much trying to prove that Ulbricht had anything to do with the site (because the association was proven), but rather who actually was the mastermind behind the site (and pocketing large sums of cash from transactions). Seems association with such a site would carry a lesser charge than being the one who was profiting off of the marketplace and behind its original conception (this is my limited understanding and it could be wrong).
This story is absolutely insane, it will be interesting to see where this case heads. From what I gather, the bust in the library, screenshots of the chat and admin panel of the site and supposedly a few scrunched up pieces of paper found in the bin of Ulbrichts home are all they have (that we know about). There is nothing that actually proves or disproves that either Ulbricht or Karpeles, are the owners of Silk Road.
Now we just need the defence to come out and claim that Karpeles is actually Satoshi Nakamoto and then we've got ourselves a super interesting case. There is undoubtedly a movie script in here somewhere once the case is finished.
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/01/judge-govt-can-sh...
The likely explanation here is that they exaggerate everything to some insane degree for exciting press conferences (and to subtly poison potential jurors).
He wasn't the real Dread Pirate Roberts either. The real Roberts has been retired fifteen years and living like a king in Patagonia.
And if I may digress into some meta-HN analysis, the original comment received about 7 upvotes in the few minutes after it was posted (i.e. when it was near the top). But when newer comments came in and it was near the bottom, that's when the downvoting started.
Now stop calling your own comment 'awesome', please.
And you have very lax standards for 'timely'.
The verdict is in: yes, HN really is so humorless. Such a pity.
I'm not sure what the "I'm not the kingpin" defense actually buys.