
Should Blackmail Be Legal? - hirundo
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/ajykDPoioWophNRkA/highlights-from-the-blackmail-debate-robin-hanson-vs-zvi
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captainmuon
> Robin Hanson: My claim was not so much that blackmail is good but that no
> one had offered concrete, clear, consequentialist arguments for why
> blackmail should be banned, especially relative to allowing NDAs in terms of
> who makes the offer.

It's about power imbalance. In the case of blackmail, it's extortion. Someone
forces you to pay money and threatens you with unpleasant consequences.

With an NDA, not the person signing the NDA has more power, the other party
has. Yes, they pay you, but they can sue you if you leak the secret.

Which, thinking about it, also likely happens if a blackmailer leaks their
secret when you don't pay up... So I think the assymetry is not as big as they
say. Also a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of a small mind.

~~~
Delk
There may be an asymmetry, but there's also a matter of choice and control.

You can (at least presumably) control whether you will break a contract (NDA
or otherwise) in the future. You cannot control something that has happened in
the past, and thus you have much less choice over your actions if you're
blackmailed.

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whatisthiseven
Robin misses the point that blackmail harms people as it is an ongoing threat.
How would you write a contract that says what you are being blackmailed for
without the lawyers involved that wrote the contract also blackmailing you?
How do you prevent someone from leaking something anonymously and reneging on
the contract to blackmail you repeatedly for the same thing? I feel the con
side was really weak and didn't dive into the actual implementation problems
at all.

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viggity
this reminds me of the letterman case. The guy got nailed for blackmail, he
would have been so much better off just selling the info to a tabloid.

