Deep Web (2015)

Go in cold, and you're likely to emerge with your blood boiling. This has to be seen to be believed.

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

Some English major took the time to read the related Wikipedia pages. Than he read some of the blog footnotes. And boom! The guy is knowledgeable enough to talk about something that does not exist. There is nothing deep about the web. And there is nothing hidden. There are quite a few "hidden" networks in the Internet. And many intranet pages in local networks, that aren't on the Internet. Rehashing blogs seems to be good to get you good reviews through confirmation bias, in other words you scratch my back meaning I want to believe X and I will scratch yours meaning I will call you an expert. But rehashing blog pages does not mean knowledge.Contact me with Questions, Comments or Suggestions ryitfork @ bitmail.ch

The Dark Web is a red herring title as the documentary here is almost in it's entirety about the dark net web site Silk Road and it's alleged founder Ross Ulbricht. Perhaps 10% of the movie speaks to the actual creation and on going nature of the so called "Dark Web". That said, the case involving Ross Ulbricbht is just as interesting, maybe even more important as much of how anyone's freedom in cyberspace will play out.If like me you've read several articles about Ross Ullbricht and The Silk Road you likely vacillated between believing he's a criminal or martyr. You'll be a bit more in the middle post viewing The Dark Web, even leaning toward thinking he's a naive idealist in the pursuit of a fantasy world with total freedom and non-oppression for all. No matter how guilty or innocent he may be he was convicted of, the fact that this idealism was tied to a lucrative drug trade, It doomed him. If he could have set up a marketplace for just about anything legally acceptable he would be a visionary. So, in the end you feel he was somewhat unfairly crushed by the powers that be, but he actually went too far by asking for it. Perhaps his goal to be a martyr was achieved as his ideas live on. In the documentary The Dark Web you feel less than impressed however. You really didn't learn much about the actual dark web and you are really conflicted as to if Ulbricht got what he deserved or was a victim of grossly misused judicial power. This is a confusing piece of film from the title to the end credits.

For a documentary that's called "Deep Web", this documentary completely misses the point.In the first couple of minutes, it explains perfectly what the deep web is for. It explains that there are far more actually useful ways of using it then there are illegal ways of using it. After that, unfortunately, the documentary goes downhill.It talks about the Silk Road, about the trial of Ross Ulbricht, about the suspicious government activities while building the case against him, about the drug wars... A minute after minute it goes further and further away from the actual topic and talks about the things that have weaker and weaker connection to the actual title. I did my best to watch it until the end, but about an hour later, I just couldn't take it anymore.If this documentary was called "Silk Road", I'd understand it (and I would probably have never tried to watch it since Silk Road is not that interesting topic to me), but for a documentary that's called "Deep Web", it completely misses the point and talks about... well, everything else.I do understand that the Silk Road has been in the news a lot and that it became the most recognizable site that represents what could the deep web be used for, but this documentary (like many articles I have read) talks like the deep web is nothing more then a synonym for the Silk Road. In reality, deep web is far move then that. Silk Road is just yet another website that operates using the .onion domain. Not the only one. The only reason it became this big is because we talk about it constantly. It wouldn't be such a gigantic business if it weren't for the medias that talked about it over and over again.

I really liked Alex Winter's Downloaded, as I thought it gave a very good synopsis of the Napster story. When I saw that he was doing one about the deep web, I was pretty stoked, especially sine this is a subject that is in it's early stages, unlike Napster. I heard Winter on Adam Carolla's podcast talking about it, and he spent most of the time talking about the Ulbrecht trial, which I was unfamiliar with. Still, since Ulbrecht was a major figure in the deep web, I thought it was going to be a substantial part of the documentary. I was mistaken. Ulbricht's story comprises 90% of this documentary, with various opinions on the war on drugs comprising another 8%. The remaining 2% actually talks about the deep web, and that merely serves to provide a framework and reference point for Ulbrecht's story. I hope that someday there will be a documentary about the deep web that isn't about one particular story or person, unfortunately this isn't it. That said, this is still really interesting, especially to people who have never heard of Ulbrecht's case or the deep web in general.