At 10:18 PM 5/11/01 -0500, Jim Choate wrote:
>
>On Fri, 11 May 2001, Eric Cordian wrote:
>
>> So Tim doesn't believe extortion should be a crime either?
>
>Extortion is theft by threat. The fact that it is done via speech or not
>is irrelevant. It is the use of force that makes this a crime, not the
>mechanism of that force.
>
Extortion is too general to be useful ethically. If I 'extort' you
by offering to trade some value for my silence about your 'secret'
behavior, this is not immoral ---its offering a privacy service.
Extortion by threatening violence is violence, and should be a crime.
This has been discussed before.
