It would seem that anyone undertaking the operation of a darknet market is putting themselves at risk of getting caught and prosecuted for drug trafficking or related crimes.
I remember a time when we all thought that TOR was invincible and markets run by 20-something would-be drug-lords were popping up left and right every week.
After Ulbricht was sentenced to life in prison, things seem to have quieted down a little. Evidently, running a DNM is not exactly risk-free!
Well, what if we did things differently...?
What if there was a way to run a drug-selling DNM without breaking the law?
For all we know, thousands of drug-deals are carried out daily via encrypted messages on reddit, Facebook, drug-forums etc.
Surely, the people running these sites couldn't possibly get in trouble for this, could they? They would surely deny knowledge of any such deals, and that would be it.
So, then, couldn't we design a DNM that operates on similar principles?
For example, what if there was a DNM that was marketed as "a directory of online drug 'researchers' and the substances they research, purely for informational and harm-reduction purposes". Give it a message-system and bitcoin-donation system, so you can order from show your support for the research efforts of your favorite researchers.
The owners of such a site would not be breaking the law anymore than reddit, erowid, facebook, would they?
"What?! People are using our site to buy and sell drugs? That's preposterous! We are a well-respected harm-reduction site!"
So, what do you guys think?
Did I just write DNM-history with this brilliant idea of mine?
edit: Ok, maybe not.
Umm.. Just no. It wouldn't work out. A harm reduction site that has "resources" to obtain drugs in anyway wouldn't work out. If the gov was to buy a sample just to bring down the site, it'd be easy asf?