Blackmail as a Victimless Crime: Reply to Altman (1998)
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Blackmail as a Victimless Crime: Reply to Altman (1998)
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Re: Blackmail as a Victimless Crime: Reply to Altman (1998)
#2Can two rights make a wrong?
Re: Blackmail as a Victimless Crime: Reply to Altman (1998)
#3Can two rights make a wrong?
Sure: make two right-turns and now you're facing left (which is "sinister" in Latin, coincidence? I think not).
Re: Blackmail as a Victimless Crime: Reply to Altman (1998)
#4Sounds like that Simpsons episode (https://simpsons.fandom.com/wiki/The_Bob_Next_Door):
Bob arrives at The Five Corners and has himself and Bart (with his hands and feet bound with duct tape) stand in two of the states at the meeting point. He then tells Bart of his plan to murder him: Bob will stand in one state; reach into a second state and shoot his gun; have the bullet travel through a third state; hit Bart in a fourth state; and Bart will fall dead in the fifth state (although this is not possible, as the bullet would have to curve around to actually hit Bart). Because all portions of the process is legal, he will have immunity from prosecution in all five states so Bob can’t be charged for Bart's murder.
Re: Blackmail as a Victimless Crime: Reply to Altman (1998)
#5Abstract
The legal theory of blackmail is the veritable puzzle surrounded by a mystery wrapped in an enigma. Consider. Blackmail consists of two things, each indisputably legal on their own; yet, when combined in a single act, the result is considered a crime. What are the two things? First, there is either a threat or an offer. In the former case, it is, typically, to publicize an embarrassing secret; in the latter, it is to remain silent about this information. Second, there is a demand or a request for funds or other valuable considerations. When put together, there is a threat that unless paid off, the secret will be told.
Either of these things, standing alone, is perfectly legal. To tell an embarrassing secret is to do no more than gossip; no one has ever been incarcerated for that. To ask for money is likewise a legitimate activity, as everyone from Bill Clinton to the beggar to the fund raiser for the local charity can attest. Yet when combined, the result is called blackmail and it is widely seen as a crime.
But that is just the puzzle. The mystery is that over a dozen attempts to account for this puzzle have been written, and not a one of them agrees to any great extent with any other. It is as if there are a plethora of witnesses to a motor vehicle accident, each not only disagreeing with all the others, but each telling a completely different story. The enigma is that with the exception of a corporal's guard of commentators, no one has seen fit to assert the contrary: that two legal "whites" cannot make an illegal "black."
This is precisely the point of the present paper. The authors maintain that since it is legal to gossip, it should therefore not be against the law to threaten to gossip, unless paid off not to do so. In a word, blackmail is a victimless crime, and must be legalized, if justice is to be attained. The authors also reply to a paper written by Scott Altman, who takes a different position.
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Delivery.cfm/98032702.pdf?abstr...
Re: Blackmail as a Victimless Crime: Reply to Altman (1998)
#6Doesn't the same thing apply to bribery?
I can gift you something, and I can ask you to do something. But if I do the first conditioned on the second it's bribery.
Re: Blackmail as a Victimless Crime: Reply to Altman (1998)
#7Blackmail is a stupid crime, because you could basically always do it in a way that doesn’t fit the definition of the crime. The threat never has to be directly made, and the offer never has to be directly associated with it. Only the clumsiest blackmail practitioner would ever find themselves creating evidence of a blackmail crime.
Re: Blackmail as a Victimless Crime: Reply to Altman (1998)
#8> Blackmail consists of two things, each indisputably legal on their own; yet, when combined in a single act, the result is considered a crime.
A stabbing consists of someone's torso and someone's knife occupying the same space at the same time. Each is fine on its own, though!
Re: Blackmail as a Victimless Crime: Reply to Altman (1998)
#9What a pathetic straw man of a paper.
It’s transparently obvious that blackmail is not a victimless crime given it’s not hard to identify who the victim is in a case of blackmail. Secondly their argument (blackmail comprises two parts each of which is legal on its own and therefore should be legal when done together) is both untrue on its face and fails given there are lots of things which are legal in isolation that are illegal together (eg it’s legal to buy alcohol, it’s legal to be 16, it’s not legal to be 16 and buy alcohol. It’s legal to drink, it’s legal to ride a motorcycle, it’s not legal to ride a motorcycle when you have been drinking etc).
It’s untrue on its face given that the threat part of blackmail may well be illegal on its own and the reveal of the information may be illegal depending on what the information is and how it was obtained..
Re: Blackmail as a Victimless Crime: Reply to Altman (1998)
#10Blackmail is often restricted to publishing information regarding an illegel activity, not just an embarrassing one, in which case the public is the victim of both the potential coverup and the discriminatory enforcement of the law.