Yeah you’re correct from what I know. Most extortion/blackmail laws are referencing a legal concept of consideration. An example from contract law, agreeing to

Yeah you’re correct from what I know. Most extortion/blackmail laws are referencing a legal concept of consideration. An example from contract law, agreeing to “not do something illegal” doesn’t count as consideration because you were already obligated to not do something illegal. This would also apply for promising “to do something you are already legally required to do”. Reasonable people might be able to disagree on whether this GitHub repository is per se illegal. If it’s the IPFS files that are illegal instead of the GitHub repo, then demanding he take down the GitHub repo would be seeking consideration from him to do something he’s not inherently bound by law to do anyways. Certainly a place where reasonable minds might say “Huh. Sounds like there’s room for a court to make a decision on that.” rather than holding a dogmatic opinion before/without really diving deep into all the details.