Quote:
Originally Posted by hulk
It's immoral if it causes grief/pain to the other party, either financially or having to deal with the repercussions. Since blackmail by it's nature is a choice between one of two painful outcomes, it's rotten to the core.
|
Of course blackmail is wrong if the act of revealing the information is wrong. If you have no right to tell a woman that her husband is cheating on her, then blackmailing the husband would also be wrong. But I disagree that doing something that causes grief/pain is necessarily wrong. If I call someone an asshole, that causes pain, but it's not wrong. Similarly, I don't see how it's wrong to reveal, without a blackmail attempt, that someone is cheating on their spouse. If most people do see that as wrong, then perhaps that was a poor example to use.
Quote:
Originally Posted by elaphe
What decision is sold? The decision to tell or not to tell is based solely on obtaining payment. The blackmailer is not selling a decision, rather is selling the threat of exposure. I get the feeling that inBOIL is confusing (and please correct me if I am wrong.) the selling of information versus the consequence of public knowledge. The immorality is not the possession of the information, rather the threat of exposing that information for personal gain.
|
I'm not talking about selling the information itself, but rather the decision of whether to reveal that information. In my example, the blackmailer sells to the cheating husband the decision of whether or not the wife hears about his infidelity.
Quote:
Originally Posted by jewels443
So you want to pick and choose what you can get paid to keep secret?
|
How is that morally different from choosing what you keep secret? Why does the addition of getting paid make it wrong?
The issue I'm getting at (and may have failed to properly convey) is:
If you have a choice, and
both options are morally acceptable, (i.e. you have the moral right to reveal information without a blackmail attempt, and you have a moral right to withhold that information without a blackmail attempt) then why is an attempt to profit from that situation wrong?