Blackmail - Wikipedia

Coercion based on threat of revealing information For other uses, see Blackmail (disambiguation). Not to be confused with Bankmail.

Blackmail is a criminal act of coercion using a threat.

As a criminal offense, blackmail is defined in various ways in common law jurisdictions. In the United States, blackmail is generally defined as a crime of information, involving a threat to do something that would cause a person to suffer embarrassment or financial loss.[1] By contrast, in the Commonwealth its definition is wider: for example, the laws of England and Wales and Northern Ireland state that:

A person is guilty of blackmail if, with a view to gain for himself or another or with intent to cause loss to another, he makes any unwarranted demand with menaces...[2][3]

In popular culture, 'blackmail' involves a threat to reveal or publicize either substantially true or false information about a person or people unless certain demands are met. It is often damaging information, and it may be revealed to family members or associates rather than to the general public.

Acts of blackmail can also involve using threats of physical, mental or emotional harm, or of criminal prosecution, against the victim or someone close to the victim.[4][5] It is normally carried out for personal gain, most commonly of position, money, or property.[4][6][7][8]

Blackmail may also be considered a form of extortion[4] and may be covered in the same statutory provision as extortion.[9] Although the two are generally synonymous, extortion is the taking of personal property by threat of future harm.[10] Blackmail is the use of threat to prevent another from engaging in a lawful occupation and writing libelous letters or letters that provoke a breach of the peace, as well as use of intimidation for purposes of collecting an unpaid debt.[11]

In many jurisdictions, blackmail is a statutory offense, often criminal, carrying punitive sanctions for convicted perpetrators. Blackmail is the name of a statutory offense in the United States, England and Wales, Hong Kong[12], and Australia,[13] and has been used as a convenient way of referring to certain other offenses, but was not a term used in English law until 1968.[14]

Blackmail was originally a term from the Scottish Borders meaning payments rendered in exchange for protection from thieves and marauders.[6][11][15][16]

Etymology

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The word blackmail is variously derived from the word for mailing (in modern terms, protection racket) paid by English and Scottish border dwellers to Border Reivers in return for immunity from raids and other harassment. The "mail" part of blackmail derives from Middle English male, "rent, tribute," from Old Norse mál (“agreement, speech, lawsuit”).[16] This tribute was paid in goods or labour (reditus nigri, or "blackmail"); the opposite is blanche firmes or reditus albi, or "white rent" (denoting payment in silver). Alternatively, Mackay derives it from two Scottish Gaelic words blathaich pronounced (the th silent) bla-ich (to protect) and mal (tribute, payment), cf. buttock mail. He notes that the practice was common in the Scottish Highlands as well as the Borders.[17] In the Irish language, the term cíos dubh, meaning "black rent", was used for similar exactions.

Objections to criminalization

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Some scholars have argued that blackmail should not be a crime.[18][19][20][21] Objections to the criminalization of blackmail often rest on what legal scholars call "the paradox of blackmail": it takes two separate actions that, in many cases, people are legally and morally entitled to do, and criminalizes them if done together. One American legal scholar uses the example of a person who threatens to expose a criminal act unless he is paid money. The person has committed the crime of blackmail, even though he separately has the legal right both to threaten to expose a crime and to request money from a person.[22]

See also

[edit] Look up blackmail in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

• Emotional blackmail
• Graymail
• Loan shark
• Nuclear blackmail
• Pizzo (extortion)
• Sextortion
• Whitemail

In film

• Blackmail, (1920 film)
• Blackmail, (1929 film)

Notes

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1. ^ Blackmail Law: Justicia
2. ^ Section 21(1) Theft Act 1968
3. ^ Section 20(1) Theft Act (Northern Ireland) 1969
4. ^ a b c Merriam-Webster's dictionary of law. Merriam-Webster. 1996. p. 53. ISBN 978-0-87779-604-6. Retrieved 23 May 2011.
5. ^ The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th edition. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. 2010.
6. ^ a b "Blackmail". Merriam-Webster. Archived from the original on 21 October 2017. Retrieved 23 May 2011.
7. ^ Burton's Legal Thesaurus. McGraw-Hill Professional. 2006. p. 233. ISBN 978-0-07-147262-3. Retrieved 23 May 2011.
8. ^ The encyclopedia of American law enforcement. Infobase Publishing. 2007. p. 78. ISBN 978-0-8160-6290-4. Retrieved 23 May 2011.
9. ^ Florida Statutes § 836.05 (2024), from Florida Legislature
10. ^ Frank Schmalleger; Daniel E. Hall; John J. Dolatowski (2009). Criminal Law Today (4th ed.). Prentice Hall. pp. 271–272. ISBN 978-0-13-504261-8.
11. ^ a b West's encyclopedia of American law, Volume 2. West Pub. Co. 1998. pp. 569 pages. ISBN 978-0-314-20155-3. Retrieved 23 May 2011.
12. ^ "Cap. 210 Theft Ordinance ─ Section 23 Blackmail". Hong Kong e-Legislation. Department of Justice. Retrieved 2 January 2026.
13. ^ "Legislation View Page". thelaw.tas.gov.au. Archived from the original on 19 September 2016. Retrieved 18 September 2016.
14. ^ Griew, Edward. The Theft Acts 1968 & 1978, Sweet & Maxwell: London. Fifth Edition, paperback, ISBN 0-421-35310-4, paragraph 12-01 at page 183
15. ^ "Dictionary of the Scots Language:: SND :: black mail". Archived from the original on 15 August 2020. Retrieved 19 June 2020.
16. ^ a b Maeve Maddox (10 May 2011). "The Difference Between Extortion and Blackmail". Archived from the original on 13 July 2011. Retrieved 18 July 2011.
17. ^ Mackay, Charles; Ramsay, Allan; May, G. (1888). "Black-mail". A dictionary of Lowland Scotch, with an introductory chapter on the poetry, humour, and literary history of the Scottish language and an appendix of Scottish proverbs. London: Whittaker. pp. 10–12.
18. ^ Lindgren (1984), p. 670: "Most crimes do not need theories to explain why the behavior is criminal. The wrongdoing is self-evident. But blackmail is unique among major crimes: no one has yet figured out why it ought to be illegal."
19. ^ Block, Walter, "Blackmail as a Victimless Crime Archived 8 August 2017 at the Wayback Machine," with Robert McGee, Bracton Law Journal, Vol. 31, pp. 24–28 (1999)
20. ^ Block, Walter, "Blackmailing for Mutual Good: A Reply to Russell Hardin Archived 19 March 2011 at the Wayback Machine," Vermont Law Review, Vol. 24, No. 1, pp. 121–141 (1999)
21. ^ Walter Block, N. Stephan Kinsella and Hans-Hermann Hoppe (July 2000), "The Second Paradox of Blackmail", Business Ethics Quarterly, 10 (3): 593–622, doi:10.2307/3857894, JSTOR 3857894, S2CID 5684396
22. ^ Lindgren (1984), pp. 670–71.

References

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• Baker, Dennis J., Glanville Williams Textbook of Criminal Law. Sweet & Maxwell: London. (2005) ISBN 978-0-414-04613-9.
• Criminal Law Revision Committee. 8th Report. Theft and Related Offences. Cmnd. 2977
• Griew, Edward. Theft Acts 1968 & 1978, Sweet & Maxwell: London. ISBN 978-0-421-19960-6
• Lindgren, James (1984). "Unraveling the Paradox of Blackmail". Columbia Law Review. 84 (3): 670–717. doi:10.2307/1122502. JSTOR 1122502.
• Ormerod, David. Smith and Hogan Criminal Law, LexisNexis: London. (2005) ISBN 978-0-406-97730-4
• Smith, J. C. Law of Theft, LexisNexis: London. (1997) ISBN 978-0-406-89545-5

External links

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• "Blackmail" . Encyclopedia Americana. 1920.
• Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Blackmail" . Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.

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