Why The Dark Web Should Be Illegal

According to the Oxford Dictionary, the dark web defines as "the part of the World Wide Web that is only accessible by means of special software, allowing users and website operators to remain anonymous or untraceable." This definition sums up what the dark web is: a difficult-to-to the dark web and the anonymity of browsing the dark web. Despite it presenting the dark web as a seemingly safe place on the internet to be, the dark web has managed to earn a reputation for being a breeding ground for drug trafficking, extremely mature adult content, and even human torture broadcasts.

These acts that take place in the dark web is my influence on why the dark web should be made illegal.

In 1995, mathematicians Paul Syverson, David Goldschlag, and Michael Reed from the United States Naval Research Laboratory began work on a new internet encryption technology called onion routing. The public was given access to the technology as a Firefox-based browser named Tor in 2004 in an effort to make the deep web truly anonymous for the United States government.

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Tor, having the encryption technology to access dark websites with the domain name '.onion'. A study in early 2016 identified out of 2,723 active '.onion' websites on the Tor network that 1,547 of them contained illicit content. Of these dark websites, 27% included drugs, 21% included illegal finance, 8% pornography, and the rest includes various other illicit themes like hacking and extremism. Over half of the Tor websites on the dark web are illegal.

If these statistics have been proven to exist, why haven't they been taken into consideration? This is simple evidence that the dark web shouldn't be legal, but let's get more specific.

While the dark web has non-illegal uses in anonymous data transfer and the journalism industry, this easy access to anonymity opens gates to all sorts of illegal activity, including illegal selling of drugs. An example of a drug trafficking website is the notorious Silk Road black market. Launched in February 2011, Silk Road was an anonymous dark website where users could buy and sell almost any kind of drug that exists. However, Ross Ulbricht, the creator of the marketplace, was arrested by the FBI in October 2013. After being convicted he was later sentenced to life imprisonment with no chance of parole in May 2015. However, that was not the end of Silk Road. In November 2013, shortly after Ulbricht was arrested, Blake Benthall and administrators from Silk Road created Silk Road 2.0. But Benthall was also arrested by the FBI one year later. There was also a Silk Road 3.0 that closed in 2017 due to low revenue. Even though Silk Road was one of the most popular black markets for drugs on the dark web, not even the FBI could keep the sites under control.

If action against the deep web is to be taken, it should be taken now. Since there is a leading motif of anonymity on the dark web, it is unknown if websites on the dark web can be legitimate, or if they even exist at all. An example of this are red rooms. Red Rooms are video broadcasts of people being tortured, and often viewers can suggest things the torturer can do to the victim. However, there has been no real evidence that red rooms exist. and many people consider not to be real. In August 2015, a link ending in '.onion' was spread across the internet and got people talking. Users all over the internet were lead to believe there was going to be a real red room broadcast. The website showed a countdown and a description reportedly saying there would be a broadcast of captured ISIS terrorists who would be tortured on the video stream. However, when the broadcast went live, all the viewers were greeted with was a plate of bacon. The red room was a scam. However, this joke only came along after the red room myths started to circulate the internet. Is it reasonable to give these myths the benefit of the doubt? If red rooms aren't real, how can they be myths in the first place?

The dark web is the number one source for the most horrific internet content you can find. Once you see something, you cannot 'unsee' it, and nowhere else does that phrase apply more than the dark web. If we continue to leave people to mould the dark web into the worse of a place, who knows what it could become.