Blackmail

BLACKMAIL - A criminal act of extortion, malicious threatening to do injury to another to compel him to do an act against his will. Usually involves the threat to release information, often true, about the person that will defame his reputation or bring criminal actions against him.

The criminality lies not in the release of the information - at least if true - but in the extortionate aspects of the threat to do so.

BLACK MAIL - When rents were reserved payable in work, grain, and the like, they were called reditus nigri, or black mail, to distinguish them from white rents or blanch farms, or such as were paid in money.
   

This entry contains material from Bouvier's Legal Dictionary, a work published in the 1850's.

The demanding of money either for performing an existing duty, orfor preventing an injury, or exercising an influence; the extortion of thingsof value from a person by threats of a personal injury, or by threatening toaccuse the person of a crime or an immoral conduct, which if true, would tendto disgrace the person.