Closing down the web’s biggest drug shop has simply cleared the way for competitors

ROSS ULBRICHT, better known by his online pseudonym, “Dread Pirate Roberts”, was sentenced to life in prison on May 29th for his part in running the Silk Road, a now-defunct website which was once the eBay of illegal drugs. When the FBI shut down the Silk Road in October 2013, it looked like a crushing blow to online drug-dealing. The site had 13,000 drug listings, making up more than 70% of the online drug market. But the industry bounced back. Within months of the Silk Road’s closure, a new site called Silk Road 2.0 popped up. It, too, was soon busted, at which point two smaller sites, Evolution and Agora, took up the slack. When in March this year Evolution vanished (this time as the result of a scam by its operators, rather than a police investigation), the gap was filled within a month by new pretenders. Mr Ulbricht's harsh sentence is intended to serve as a warning to others. Don’t expect it to have much effect.

Dig deeper:

The disappearance of Evolution (April 2015)

Dark net and illicit e-commerce (November 2014)

Closing down Silk Road (October 2013)