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.
Good.
Let's keep in mind that the shared faith in this "holy religion, the rule of law" is the only thing holding together your country, my country, everyone's countries, and civilized society in general. Take that away, and everything around us will collapse, regressing the few survivors of that event to the prehistorical lifestyle of small tribes slaughtering each other for what little scraps the land has to give.
The fact that everybody is equal in front of justice and that justice should be independent, two of the basics tenet of the rule of law, were hated by the Nazis and called 'jewish law', and were targeted. Lawyers and judges were increasingly close to the Nazi party. The same crime by a party member didn't had the same consequence.
I think the Nazis pamphlet said that 'roman law follow the materialistic world order, and should be replaced by German law'. Where materialistic was a dogwhistle for Marxism, and world order for Judaism.
What did help Nazis was that older judges and lawyers were often aristocrats who didn't really love the republic, and new one were petty bourgeoisie where Nazism had a lot of supporters. They helped put a staunch conservative (who later joined the Nazis) at the head of the German supreme court before 1933. The man blocked socdems appointments, and changed how the German law was interpreted (basically pushing intent of the law vs letter of the law, where intent weirdly always aligned with Nazi ideology).
Then, once they had power, the first thing they did after the conservative Hindenburg (may he be remembered as Hitler first collaborator) declared a 'state of emergency was to suspend judiciary oversight over arrest and imprisonment.
I guess the psychological aspect of clamoring for a strong leader would need more deep diving. Serhii Plokhy and Martti J Kari have talked about this in regards to Russia, those are available as Lex Fridman interview and youtube lecture: a strongman, even with downsides, is still preferrable to a weak leadership that is unable to defend against external threats or internal chaos.
The reader's pronounciation of German is quite incomprehensible though (book is in English). Völkischer Beobachter is not easy.
What's interesting with that is that I think it is wrong, the part against 'external threats'. France during the revolution was attacked by everyone, and despite absolutely no leadership, managed to beat back, well, everyone. By deferring power, it made its army stronger. Yes, then some the people the republic deferred power to then took the rest of it by force, but the laws were weak and the culture not set yet.