The trial of Ross Ulbricht—the man the federal government says was behind The Silk Road—has been a kind of legal coming-out party for the darker corners of the internet. Jurors have had to acquaint themselves with things like the anonymizing browser Tor, and Ulbricht's surprise defense involved the disgraced founder of a failed Bitcoin operation. But the courts have also had to contend with friendlier facets of web culture, like emoji.

Right now, a 30-year-old engineer is on trial for founding and operating an enormous online black market—the Amazon of drugs. The outcome of his trial could change the way we use the internet.

Since his arrest in 2013, Ross Ulbricht has remained the chief suspect behind the Silk Road, a sweeping and sophisticated online drug market. But today in court, his defense dropped a shocker: they claimed the market's actual kingpin was Mark Karpeles, who is infamous for running the world's biggest bitcoin operation into the ground before he turned 29.