A laptop running a program designed to do nothing else but randomly buy items off of the Dark Web site Agora has finally been returned to the Swiss art group that created it.

Police had seized the laptop, which was part of an art exhibit by !Mediengruppe Bitnik, in January. All the other items associated with the exhibit were also returned to the group, except for some Ecstasy pills that were destroyed by local authorities.

The group tweeted about the laptop's condition on Wednesday:

Yes. The bot is totally fine. It even has some bitcoins left... #RandomDarknetShopper — !Mediengruppe Bitnik (@bitnk) April 15, 2015

According to !Mediengruppe Bitnik, the public prosecutor of St. Gallen, in Northeastern Switzerland, has dropped all charges.

As the group wrote on its site on Wednesday:

In the order for withdrawal of prosecution the public prosecutor states that the possession of Ecstasy was indeed a reasonable means for the purpose of sparking public debate about questions related to the exhibition. The public prosecution also asserts that the overweighing [sic] interest in the questions raised by the art work «Random Darknet Shopper» justify the exhibition of the drugs as artefacts [sic], even if the exhibition does hold a small risk of endangerment of third parties through the drugs exhibited. We as well as the Random Darknet Shopper have been cleared of all charges. This is a great day for the bot, for us and for freedom of art!

Neither Bitnik, nor Andreas Baumann, the spokesman for the prosecutor, immediately responded to Ars’ request for comment.

When a robot breaks the law

As Bitnik explains on its website, the computer, dubbed the “Random Darknet Shopper” was designed as a piece of live art. Given a budget of $100 in bitcoins each week, the bot would randomly choose an item on Agora and have it sent to the art gallery in St. Gallen where it (the computer) was on display.

Amongst the items that the Shopper purchased? Fake Diesel jeans, a fake Sprite “stash can,” a “decoy letter,” a Hungarian passport scan, a baseball cap with a hidden camera, knockoff Nikes, and the aforementioned Ecstasy pills. (Scope our gallery here.)

The art exhibit («The Darknet - From Memes to Onionland. An Exploration») was on display in St. Gallen for three months—but the day after it closed (January 11, 2015), local authorities seized the entire art installation.

The group wrote at the time:

What does it mean for a society, when there are robots which act autonomously? Who is liable, when a robot breaks the law on its own initiative? These were some of the main questions the work Random Darknet Shopper posed. Global questions, which will now be negotiated locally. On the morning of January 12, the day after the three-month exhibition was closed, the public prosecutor's office of St. Gallen seized and sealed our work. It seems, the purpose of the confiscation is to impede an endangerment of third parties through the drugs exhibited by destroying them. This is what we know at present. We believe that the confiscation is an unjustified intervention into freedom of art. We'd also like to thank Kunst Halle St. Gallen for their ongoing support and the wonderful collaboration. Furthermore, we are convinced, that it is an objective of art to shed light on the fringes of society and to pose fundamental contemporary questions.

By March, Bitnik announced that the forensics unit at the local cantonal police had determined that each of the seized pills “contains 90mg of MDMA,” and would be destroyed.

In 2013, the group previously created a self-photographing package to Julian Assange, inside the Ecuadorian Embassy in London.