This Documentary Takes You Inside Silk Road, the Deep Web’s Notorious Drug Marketplace

A new documentary sheds light on the deepest, darkest corners of the web – including those first occupied by the unabashedly free-market Silk Road.

By Hady MawajdehOctober 15, 2015 9:00 am

This spring a federal judge in New York City sentenced former Austinite Ross William Ulbricht to life in prison without the possibility of parole. Ulbricht is the mastermind behind the black market website Silk Road.

The Silk Road was the notorious online bazaar if you were looking to score heroin, LSD, other illicit drugs and plenty of other prohibited things, without being traced via the Deep Web.

Director Alex Winter just released the documentary “Deep Web,” which chronicles the events surrounding Silk Road, bitcoin and the politics of the deep web.

What you’ll hear in this segment:

– How Winter became interested in the story of Ross Ulbricht and the Silk Road, as well as how he chose to depict the libertarian views of the Silk Road’s architects.

– How this film fits into Winter’s other work about online communities and their world-shifting power.

– The differences between the Silk Road and other tech startups in Silicon Valley.