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Comment by andrewstuart | Hacker News Reader

"proceed with whatever budget he needed to pursue the facts in this matter"

That's the richest guy in the world saying "I don't give a XXXX what it costs, find out who did it."

It's also the moment in your life when, if you get the result that guys wants, he'll be glad to write you a cheque for $20,000,000 and will be happy to do so and he won't be interested in why the number is that high.

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That gave me chills, and the phrase, If you’re going to shoot the king, you’d better be goddamned sure you’re going to kill him flashed through my mind. Well, they missed spectacularly, and now the man who has a rocket company for fun is clearly pissed.

You come at the king, you best not miss.

Also, never take notes on a criminal fucking conspiracy ;P

I think Omar, Stringer and Machiavelli would have gotten along on some level.

"Upon this, one has to remark that men ought either to be well treated or crushed, because they can avenge themselves of lighter injuries, of more serious ones they cannot; therefore the injury that is to be done to a man ought to be of such a kind that one does not stand in fear of revenge." -Machiavelli

If you're going to do unto others,do unto them hard enough that they cannot return the favor.

It’s amazing how many people in Trump’s inner circle love quoting mob movies, calling people “rats” and “stoolies” but can’t seem to get down even the basics of being a half-decent criminal. I mean, Roger Stone literally told people to lie to Congress via an email.

One can quote mob movies all day but that doesn’t make them a smart criminal.

I mean, they've lived in an era when being a white collar criminal is basically without legal penalty (as long as you're a white guy). It's really no wonder so many of them are so completely stupid, they would've had nothing to fear if their guy hadn't gotten himself elected.

Said another way, the underprosecution of white-collar crime provides an advantage to career criminals.

Go where the cops ain't.

There is a good reason for this. Real criminals don't aspire to be criminals... they just are, for whatever reason, necessity or lack of certain morals.

People who idolize criminals show an entirely different character defect, one that is in opposition to being productive in any task criminal or otherwise.

I don't even think mobsters tend to be that smart. The most vile humans, most willing to kill their competition first just naturally rise to the top.

Random but sorta relevant: In the video game Morrowind, there's a king who wears the best ring in the game - it provides constant life and stamina regeneration. The only way to take it is to kill him. But you better be prepared to fight a room full of very powerful guards. You better be prepared when you go at him.

Indeed! Even I was quite fascinated by that phrase. I really wonder if AMI folks did any what-if analysis before shooting off those e-mails. At least the best-case and worst-case scenarios if not exploring all possible branches.

I mean come on, you are literally taking on the richest person on earth and didn't even evaluate implications!? Just to belabor the point, he's not only the richest person right now, he's among the top 15[1] wealthiest persons of human civilization. And you are threatening him with, what, a bunch of nudish images and adult text messages!?

> and now the man who has a rocket company for fun is clearly pissed.

This had me laughing for a long time!!

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wealthiest_historical_...

Edit: Added wikipedia reference.

This feels like they've similarly extorted many people before this and had gotten lazy, forgetting to keep doing that sort of analysis.

I'm getting strong vibes of Thiel and Gawker here. Attempting to intimidate a billionaire is generally a poor decision.

This is worse than Gawker outing Thiel as gay. In this case they're attempting blackmail ahead of time, which may be a crime.

It’s generally not blackmail to threaten someone with some action that, by itself, is legal. See, for example, the many civil settlements where rich people stop the people they raped from going to the police. And I’m unsure what the status is on publishing salacious private photos. Sure, there is a copyright issue. But that’s a civil matter, not criminal.

If it were a crime, it really wouldn’t be much of a threat because they’d be unlikely to follow through, would they?

Edit: there is one federal law where threatening embarrassment is enough, but that requires a demand for money or property, which this is explicitly not.

And because the downvotes are already rolling in: Note that I find this just as abhorrent as you do, and that sexploitation should absolutely be a crime. But the legal situation unfortunately is not at all as clear as the moral one. And the replies below are mostly embarrassing in that nobody even seems to have a clue on the difference between civil and criminal law. Carry on then...

That's not true at all.

> Blackmail is the crime of threatening to reveal embarrassing, disgraceful or damaging information about a person to the public, family, spouse or associates unless money is paid to purchase silence. It is a form of extortion. Because the information is usually substantially true, it is not revealing the information that is criminal, but demanding money to withhold it.

https://definitions.uslegal.com/b/blackmail/

So I'm curious - is this considered blackmail if the object isn't money?

Yes, very much so.

Generally, yes, but you might catch a charge for something else. If they're not asking for money, what they're asking for has to be illegal.

Blackmail for Theft: Conspiracy to commit Theft.

Blackmail for Fraud: Conspiracy to commit Fraud.

Wikipedia says this: Blackmail is an act of coercion using the threat of revealing or publicizing either substantially true or false, and often damaging, information about a person, to the public, family members, or associates unless certain demands are met.

It seems its considered blackmail but in the strictly legal sense I'm not sure. There's probably a law to cover that though, extortion?

It only needs to be “something of value”... often money, but I think most reasonable people can see the potential value of the requested statement from Jeff Bezos.

Now if AMI wanted you or I to say those statements I’m not sure how valuable they’d be.

To elaborate, "something of value" is the language from the federal law. Under Washington state law, blackmail explicitly includes demands for services.

I would think that the demand for a public statement would qualify, however, I'm not a lawyer, and this case is unusual enough that I would not be confident in my personal interpretation of the law.

Correct. And it's important to note that AMI's claim that they could publish the photos at all is dubious at best. Whoever took the photos (presumably Bezo and/or his girlfriend) holds the copyright to the images and fair use only allows them to be reproduced by AMI if they're newsworthy. AMI claims the photos are newsworthy because they speak to his business judgment which is a serious stretch for the photos of Bezos and completely irrelevant with respect to the photos of his girlfriend.

I think the operative word in blackmail is threaten. Not so much what you happen to be threatening with.

Revenge porn elevates the issue regardless.

> It’s generally not blackmail to threaten someone with some action that, by itself, is legal.

That's entirely untrue. The downvotes are rolling in because your assertion about blackmail is simply wrong. There are a myriad of local, state, and federal laws on blackmail that cover situations like this.

Blackmail can involve any threats to coerce using private materials, not just for financial objectives.

Theres quite a bit of nuance between the #MeToo settlement agreements and coercion that you seem to be misunderstanding/glossing over: https://lawandcrime.com/legal-analysis/if-amis-jeff-bezos-sh...

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