Last year a group of Swiss artists thought it would be cool to program a bot to scour the “dark web” and buy $100 worth of random goods each week using a regular Bitcoin allowance.  Items purchased by the robot include a Hungarian passport, a baseball hat that had a hidden camera installed, someone’s entire Lord of the Rings eBook collection, and some ecstasy tablets.  

The idea was to display all this precious contraband at an art exhibit to reveal the seedy side of the Internet. Or something like that. It doesn’t matter.

What does matter is that police in Switzerland somehow caught wind of the bot’s dirty doings and then seized the computer and all the illegal items it had purchased. However, authorities did not charge any of the artists with purchasing E because they apparently never intended to sell it or use it themselves (HA HA HA YEAH RIGHT!).

The cops eventually returned both the computer and all the non-Ecstasy items it purchased back to the artists, who said this action was “a great day… for freedom of art!”

Image credit:  JD Hancock | Flickr
Via BGR