p.141 ‘Charles Schumer, the US Senator . . .’ http://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/123187958.html.
p.141 ‘There are no regulators to turn . . .’ The greatest scam ever pulled on the original Silk Road was by a vendor called Tony76 who spent months building up a solid online reputation and then ran multiple scams, known as ‘Finalise Early’ scams.
p.142 ‘Major e-commerce companies spend millions . . .’ Nahai, N., Webs of Influence.
p.142 ‘We do this in several different ways . . .’ http://allthingsvice.com/2013/04/23/competition-for-black-market-share-hotting-up/.
p.144 ‘It provides the most detailed . . .’ It was uploaded on a Tor Hidden Service as a very large Excel File. Data relates to all feedback given on the site between 10 January and the time of writing (April 15/16). It is continually updated. This data was collected by gathering reviews on all purchases (which is close to mandatory). Not quite back to the level at the height of Silk Road in July 2013 – but getting close. One review is left per transaction, not per product, so it is likely that this is a conservative estimate. In 2012, Professor Nicolas Christin wrote an excellent report based on user review feedback left on the original Silk Road. http://www.andrew.cmu.edu/user/nicolasc/publications/TR-CMU-CyLab-12-018.pdf.
p.145 ‘Although vendors tend to be based . . .’
Nation (‘shipping from’) No. of vendors Percentage of vendors
United States 231 33.4
United Kingdom 70 10.4
Australia 66 9.4
Germany 47 6.7
Canada 36 5.1
Netherlands 36 5.1
Sweden 21 3.4
Spain 10 1.4
China 9 1.3
Belgium 8 1.2
France 8 1.1
India 8 1.1
p.146 ‘Twenty-one vendors sold over . . .’ Other vendors sell more products – professorhouse is selling 1,170 items – but these are not drugs, and include scamming and hacking guides.
p.147 ‘A very decent salary . . .’
Name Products Overall turnover (99 days)
AmericaOnDrugs Varied; drugs $45,209
BlackBazar Heroin, cocaine, MDMA $12,068
Koptevo Prescription drugs only 1$9,197
Demoniakteam Cannabis, ecstasy, psychedelics $16,287
Instrument MDMA only $24,790
California Dreamin Mainly cannabis, some prescription drugs $39,329
GucciBUDS A variety, mainly cannabis $14,912
MDMAte MDMA only $11,727
Aussie Quantomics Mainly MDMA, some psychedelics $16,099
p.147 ‘(Studies typically show that . . .’ http://www.standard.co.uk/news/19000-a-year-is-average-profit-of-a-drug-dealer-6667533.html; http://www.jrf.org.uk/publications/understanding-drug-selling-local-communities; http://www.prisonpolicy.org/scans/sp/5049.pdf.
p.147 ‘But Silk Road has brought new . . .’ http://www.reddit. com/r/casualiama/comments/1l0axd/im_a_former_silk_road_drug_dealer_ama/; http://www.vice.com/print/internet-drug-dealers-are-really-nice-guys.
p.147 ‘“We are an importer” . . .’ http://mashable.com/2013/10/02/silk-road-drug-dealer-interview/.
p.148 ‘“When you’re going to leave” . . .’ It is still some way off the complexity of eBay’s review system, although eBay has had substantially longer to refine it.
p.150 ‘It didn’t matter that no one . . .’ Over time, some vendors built up long-term and sustained reputations on Silk Road. Therefore, many kept the same pseudonym and transferred it to new sites. Libertas – on setting up Silk Road 2.0 – allowed all existing Silk Road vendors to immediately become Silk Road 2.0 vendors if their PGP keys matched up. When the marketplace Atlantis went online as a rival to the original Silk Road, verified Silk Road traders were able to become Atlantis traders immediately, in a clever effort to latch on to some of that precious credibility that the Silk Road had facilitated.
p.151 ‘Common tricks include creating fake . . .’ Manipulating the review system is hardly limited to the deep web. The importance of online reviews to e-commerce is feeding a growing ‘Online Reputation Management’ industry. Hundreds of companies now offer to repair and improve the reputation of companies online. Several major companies have been fined for manipulating or faking their own reviews.
p.152 ‘That’s why on the streets . . .’ Daly, M. and Sampson, S., Narcomania: How Britain Got Hooked on Drugs.
p.152 ‘Analysis of seized ecstasy tablets . . .’ Drug Treatment in 2009–10 (Report), National Treatment Agency for Substance Misuse, October 2010; https://www.unodc.org/documents/data-and-analysis/WDR2012/WDR_2012_web_small.pdf.
p.152 ‘Fourteen died . . .’ Scottish Drug Forum, ‘Anthrax and Heroin Users: What Workers Need to Know’: www.sdf.org.uk/index.php/download_file/view/262/183/ (accessed 20 April 2014).
p.152 ‘True, price here . . .’ Mahapatra, S., ‘Silk Road vs. Street: A Comparison of Drug Prices on the Street and in Different Countries’, International Business Times, http://www.ibtimes.com/silk-road-vs-street-comparison-drug-prices-street-different-countries-charts-1414634 (accessed 20 April 2014).
p.152 ‘On the other hand . . .’ Clarity Way (a drug charity), ‘The Amazon of Illegal Drugs: The Silk Road vs. The Streets [Infographic]’, ClarityWay.com, http://www.clarityway.com/blog/the-amazon-of-illegal-drugs-the-silk-road-vs-the-streets-infographic/ (accessed 20 April 2014).
p.153 ‘But according to Steve Rolles . . .’ http://www.reddit.com/r/Drugs/comments/1tvr4a/the_most_popular_drugs_bought_with_bitcoin_on/cecw84x for some discussion about the quality of the drugs. ‘With stuff like MDMA in particular, Silk Road was popular because they had the best and the cheapest that most consumers could find. The heroin from the Silk Road was rather expensive compared to local prices, but it was also some of the best (mostly). Couple venders were selling shit laced with fent[anyl], which just isn’t cool, but reviews helped.’
p.155 ‘Some of the newer markets . . .’ http://www.deepdotweb.com/2014/01/25/drugslist-now-offering-full-api-multi-sig-escrow/.
p.156 “[Multi-sig is] the only way” . . .’ http://www.deepdotweb.com/2014/02/13/silk-road-2-hacked-bitcoins-stolen-unknown-amount/.
p.157 ‘However, researchers have found that . . .’ http://motherboard.vice.com/blog/bitcoin-isnt-the-criminal-safe-haven-people-think-it-is; http://anonymity-in-bitcoin.blogspot.com/2011/07/bitcoin-is-not-anonymous.html.
p.157 ‘CoinJoin, for example, works . . .’ https://bitcointalk.org/index.php? topic=139581.0.
p.158 ‘The future of these markets . . .’ http://www.chaum.com/articles/Security_Wthout_Identification.htm. This was what David Chaum – the inventor of digital cash twenty years before Satoshi Nakamoto – had in mind all along. In his 1985 book, Security without Identification: Transaction Systems to Make Big Brother Obsolete, he set out systems that could combine anonymity with secure payment.
p.159 ‘Dark net markets have introduced . . .’ Hirschman, A., Exit Voice and Loyalty.
p.160 ‘When Professor Nicolas Christin analysed . . .’ http://www.andrew.cmu.edu/user/nicolasc/publications/TR-CMU-CyLab-12-018.pdf.
p.160 ‘The Silk Road 2.0 . . .’ http://allthingsvice.com/2013/04/23/competition-for-black-market-share-hotting-up/.
p.160 ‘Grams searches the largest markets . . .’ http://www.deepdotweb.com/2014/04/08/grams-darknetmarkets-search-engine/.
p.161 ‘Illicit substances are more available . . .’ Kerr, T., Montaner, J., Nosyk, B., Werb, D. and Wood, E., ‘The Temporal Relationship Between Drugs Supply Indicators: An Audit of Internation Government Surveillance Systems’, http://bmjopen.bmj.com/content/3/9/e003077.full.
p.161 ‘Since President Nixon declared war . . .’ ‘War on illegal drugs failing, medical researchers warn’, BBC News, 1 October 2013 (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-24342421).
p.161 ‘There is violence and corruption . . .’ RSA Commission on Illegal Drugs, Communities and Public Policy, ‘The Supply of Drugs Within the UK’, Drugscope (http://www.drugscope.org.uk/Resources/Drugsco
pe/Documents/PDF/Good%20Practice/supply.pdf).
p.161 ‘The longer the chain . . .’ Peter Reuter, ‘Systemic Violence in Drug Markets’, Crime, Law and Social Change, September 2009, vol.52, issue 3; Martin, J., ‘Misguided Optimism: the Silk Road closure and the War on Drugs’, The Conversation, http://theconversation.com/misguided-optimism-the-silk-road-closure-and-the-war-on-drugs-18937 (accessed 20 April 2014).
p.162 ‘There are approximately 7,000 organised crime . . .’ Daly and Sampson, Narcomania, p.303.
p.162 ‘Although reliable figures for the . . .’ https://www.unodc.org/documents/data-and-analysis/WDR2012/WDR_2012_web_small.pdf.
Chapter 6
Lights, Web-camera, Action
p.164 ‘The fifteen most visited porn sites . . .’ The following is based on the Alexa Ranking, which ranks websites in terms of their global popularity (a combined score of both page views and unique visitors – in brackets in the list below). They are frequently updated, and were correct as of May 2014. I also searched for the volume of amateur videos available on each of the sites:
Xvideos.com (40): 49,003 videos
Xhamster.com (54): 368,000 videos
Pornhub.com (80): 22,743 videos
Redtube.com (98): 3,517 videos
Xnxx.com (102): 49,011 videos
LiveJasmin.com (107): a cam site, not a porn site; however its popularity is worth noting
Youporn.com (116): 43,597 videos
Tube8.com (213): 49,662 videos
Chaturbate.com (329): another cam site
YouJizz.com (351): 136,883 videos
Motherless.com (359): Motherless is a site dedicated to teen porn; amateur videos make almost all of its content. A search for amateur catalogues 200,413 videos
Beeg.com (362): 3,279 videos
Hardsextube.com (435): 8,450 videos
Drtuber.com (600): 406,119 videos
Nuvid.com (795): 347,112 videos
Spankwire.com (803): 164,111 videos
Sunporno.com (870): 51,397 videos
p.164 ‘The Free Speech Coalition estimated . . .’ Revenue hasn’t completely collapsed in the professional porn industry, of course. But the cost of production has tumbled. Back in the early 1980s it cost over $200,000 to produce a standard professional porn film; when video taping turned up in the mid-eighties, the costs fell – but by the mid-nineties a professional porn film usually cost $100,000. Towards the later nineties, some pro-am companies were producing films for closer to $20,000 – roughly what it costs now for an average, professional movie. (Although there were still enormous one: Pirates II, the most costly porno ever made, had a budget of $8 million.) Figures on porn usage and the size of the industry overall vary a lot. It is a very controversial subject. In 2007, the Observer quoted that the industry was worth $13 billion in the US, the most commonly quoted figure. In 2012, CNBC said the industry was worth $14 billion in the US. Top Ten Reviews estimates it to currently be worth $57 billion wordwide. In the US, between 2001 and 2007, internet porn went from a one-billion-dollar industry to a three-billion-dollar industry. See the following: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2007/dec/16/film.usa; http://internet-filter-review.toptenreviews.com/internet-pornography-statistics-pg2.html; http://www.toptenreviews.com/2-6-04.html; http://www.socialcostsofpornography.com/Doran_Industry_Size_Measurement_Social_Costs.pdf; http://www.thefreeradical.ca/Toronto_the_naughty.htm; http://www.overthinkingit.com/2009/03/26/the-adult-film-industry-rediscovers-its-balls/2/.
p.164 ‘In the 1980s, users of . . .’ ‘Which was to have a private chat wherein you would type in various acts that a 13-year-old boy would want to do with a 13-year-old girl.’ ‘BBS life in the 1980s’ by Mr Pez, http://textfiles.com/history/golnar.txt.
p.164 ‘The first erotic stories Usenet group . . .’ http://www.asstr.org/~apuleius/asshfaq.html#2.
p.165 ‘Porn is now estimated . . .’ McAnulty, R. and Burette, M., Sex and Sexuality, vol.1; http://articles.orlandosentinel.com/1998-03-28/lifestyle/9803270925_1_entertainment-online-video, p.269; http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-23030090.
p.165 ‘Jennifer was the very first . . .’ Senft, T. M., Camgirls: Celebrity and Community in the Age of Social Networks, p.44.
p.165 ‘At its peak, four million . . .’ ‘Behind the Scenes with Jennifer Ringley’, promo for Web Junk Presents . . . 40 Greatest Internet Superstars, 18 March 2007, http://www.spike.com/video-clips/po0d6t/behind-the-scenes-with-jennifer-ringley (accessed 4 December 2013).
p.165 ‘In 1998 she divided her . . .’ Green, L., The Internet: An Introduction to New Media, http://www.yorku.ca/robb/docs/camgi.pdf.
p.165 ‘They included several spoof JenniCam . . .’ http://www.naturistplace.com/wnl-0101.htm.
p.166 ‘Camming was becoming a gainful . . .’ http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/19/national/19kids.ready.html?pagewanted=7&_r=0&ei=5090&en=aea51b3919b2361a&ex=1292648400&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss.
p.167 ‘Today there are probably around . . .’ 50,000 is the closest I’ve got to an accurate estimate. It was provided by the administrator of a camgirl support community. There are also a certain number of camgirls from Eastern Europe and South America, and from South East Asia. Chaturbate has recently stopped accepting girls from the Philippines, for fear that they are being exploited.
p.167 ‘According to the New York Times . . .’ http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/22/technology/intimacy-on-the-web-with-a-crowd.html?adxnnl=1&pagewanted=all&adxnnlx=1394884188-8+B9Okpt1 TokwE/tHhXoAw; http://www.theverge.com/2013/9/23/4761246/cam-sex-is-booming-business-for-porn-industry.
p.167 ‘There is even a vibrant . . .’ One of them is called WeCamGirls. It started up in 2012. That year, the site had around 100,000 visitors. In 2013 it was more than twice that. It currently has over 3,000 active members.
p.168 ‘She then joined Chaturbate . . .’ http://www.wecamgirls.com/articles/in-the-spotlight-with-cliche/.
p.168 ‘“I guess I’m a real person” . . .’ ‘Labours of Love: Netporn, Web 2.0 and the Meanings of Amateurism’, New Media & Society, vol.12, no.8, 2010.
p.168 ‘“It’s a better kind of porn” . . .’ Attwood, F., Porn.com, p.139, http://nms.sagepub.com/content/early/2010/06/08/1461444810362853.full.pdf.
p.168 ‘Around the world there are . . .’ http://www.emarketer.com/Article/Where-World-Hottest-Social-Networking-Countries/1008870.
p.169 ‘Some psychologists think that social . . .’ Ma, M., ‘Understanding the Psychology of Twitter’, Psychology Today, 27 March 2009; http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-tao-innovation/200903/understanding-the-psychology-twitter (accessed December 5 2013); http://journal.frontiersin.org/Journal/10.3389/fnhum.2013.00439/full#h2.
p.169 ‘Sharing our every intimacy is . . .’ http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-tao-innovation/200903/understanding-the-psychology-twitter; Panek et al., ‘Mirror or Megaphone? How Relationships Between Narcissism and Social Networking Site Use Differ on Facebook and Twitter,’ Computers in Human Behaviour, vol.29; http://www.ipearlab.org/media/publications/Panek_Nardis_Konrath_2013.pdf; http://www.jcr-admin.org/files/pressPDFs/112712180022_Stephen_Article.pdf.
p.169 ‘She records young people spending . . .’ Turkle, S. Alone Together, p.180.
p.170 ‘Pew Research’s 2013 study . . .’ ‘Prevalence and Characteristics of Youth Sexting: A National Study’, published 19 September 2011, http://www.pewinternet.org/2014/02/11/main-report-30/; ‘Basically . . . porn is everywhere’, p.28.
p.170 ‘That’s not to say young . . .’ boyd, d., It’s Complicated, p.57.
p.170 ‘According to a 2014 YouGov . . .’ http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2575772/A-nation-amateur-porn-stars-One-five-age-40-sex-camera-30-taken-naked-photos.html; http://blog.htc.com/2013/08/the-selfie-phenomenon/.
p.170 ‘Of those who said that . . .’ ‘Half of the UK Has Joined the Selfie Craze Creating Over 35 Million Selfies a Month’, PRNewsWire.com, 13 August 2013, http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/half-of-the-uk-has-joined-the-selfie-craze-creating-over-35-million
-selfies-a-month-219364031.html (accessed 3 December 2013).
p.170 ‘Sharing images of ourselves . . .’ http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/05/opinion-naked-sexting/.
p.170 ‘Viewers respond – sometimes positively . . .’ Like most online communities, there are rules: ‘no random porn dumps’, ‘post pictures of yourself!’ and of course, ‘be respectful to each other’.
p.172 ‘In 2011, a Facebook group . . .’ Facebook was originally called Facemash. Mark Zuckerberg and his university friends wanted to rate the pictures of female students they’d managed to grab – without permission, of course – from the Harvard University files. Facemash placed a photo of female students next to each other and asked users to vote on who they thought was the best looking, with an algorithm slowly pushing certain girls up or down the list. ‘One thing is certain,’ wrote Zuckerberg on his personal blog at the time, ‘and that’s that I’m a jerk for making this site. Oh well, someone had to do it eventually.’ He was right. Within four hours there had been 22,000 visits to his site.
p.172 ‘At the moment of writing. . .’ http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/headlines/2012/03/facebook-shuts-down-most-beautiful-teen-page/; http://toronto.ctvnews.ca/cutest-teens-2013-facebook-page-taken-down-1.1540454; https://www.facebook.com/CutestTeensOfficialPage?fref=ts.
p.173 ‘We are already thirty minutes late . . .’ Vex wears grey knee-length socks, grey knickers and a grey top with her midriff showing. So does Blath. Auryn wears something similar but in black.
p.181 ‘But there are other girls . . .’ http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1hq5t9/.
p.181 ‘“Have you heard of this” . . .’ While I was writing this chapter, Chaturbate started accepting Bitcoin.
p.185 ‘The growing volume of sexually . . .’ Citron, D. K. and Franks, M., ‘Criminalising Revenge Porn’, http://digitalcommons.law.umaryland.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2424&context=fac_pubs.
p.185 ‘It was found that he had . . .’ https://oag.ca.gov/news/press-releases/attorney-general-kamala-d-harris-announces-arrest-revenge-porn-website-operator.
p.186 ‘Similar things are happening in . . .’ http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2175591/Is-YOUR-child-sending-sex-texts-school.html#ixzz26L5qLbJh; http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/27/us/27 sexting.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0. The statistics are cited in Citron and Franks, ‘Criminalising Revenge Porn’.
The Dark Net Page 25
