3 ms·

While I agree with you in theory (I think these sites are disgusting) - their legal argument is that what they are doing isn't extortion, because it's not a cas

While I agree with you in theory (I think these sites are disgusting) - their legal argument is that what they are doing isn't extortion, because it's not a case of "Pay us money or we publish" - because everything they have on their site has already been published and is public information I think the best approach is shutting down the avenues of payment, so that we can eliminate any way for people to benefit from this behavior.

downandout 13y ago
There is a very fine line between saying "I will publish if you don't pay" and "I will keep it online unless you pay". It's pretty clear that this doesn't violate the federal extortion statute, but these cases have not been tested against laws in all 50 states. I'd say the odds are pretty good that there is at least one state extortion statute written broadly enough to cover this type of behavior. All it takes is 1 prosecution in 1 state where there are victims to start taking big bites out of these sites.