Today, a jury found Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht guilty of seven charges related to his alleged role in running the deep-web bazaar for drugs and other contraband. Ulbricht admitted in court to creating the site, but insisted that he sold it to another operator and left the business before the FBI arrested him in 2013.

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.