That said, I do think he absolutely deserved to be released, not because he didn't deserve to be locked up in the first place, but because he's clearly been rehabilitated and has done great work during his time in prison. All that considered, ten years seems like a not unreasonable prison sentence for what he did. I hope he'll continue to do good when he's released.
The guy operated a marketplace for illegal goods in order to enrich himself. The illegality wasn't just incidental, it was literally his business model -- by flouting the law, he enjoyed massive market benefit (minimal competition, lack of regulation, high margins etc) by exploiting the arbitrage that the rest of us follow the rules.
Said a different way, he knowingly pursued enormous risk in order to achieve outsized benefits, and ultimately his bet blew up on him -- we shouldn't have bailed him out.
A serial rapist, even one that would happily do it again, will often repent and quickly admit guilt. They have no interest in undermining the philosophical basis of the state. They will posture themselves as bound but imperfect citizens under the law.
Ross violated the only remaining national holy religion, the rule of law. He was sentenced for being a heretic.
Uhm... Really? Is that present tense?
If rule-of-law was a national holy religion, the last 10 years of US politics would have played out very very differently.
So whatever real-world thing being described would need a different term.
* Terr_: "No, there have been too many serious breakdowns."
* dns_snek: "It's reliably unreliable, so it still counts."
* Terr_: "No, that's literally the opposite of what it means to describe a car as reliable."
* arcfour: "Terr_! Stop demanding perfection! The universe is imperfect therefore true reliability is impossible!"
* Terr_: "No, goddamnit! That's not what I said! FFS, it's as if [RECURSION EXCEEDED]"