There is no paradox of blackmail
1. The idea that there is a paradox of blackmail has gained a certain currency. In cases where it is illegal neither to make a certain threat nor to ask for money or some other favour it is thought paradoxical that it should be illegal to combine the two in an act of blackmail: for example, Joel Feinberg's extensive discussion of blackmail in his recent volume Harmless Wrongdoing ([2], pp. 241ff.) is dominated by attempts to avoid the alleged paradox. Its source appears to be a 1954 paper by Glanville Williams, although, pace Feinberg ([2], p. 363), he doesn't call it a paradox, as do subsequent writers like Jeffrie G. Murphy [6], James Lindgren [4], Feinberg himself [2], and Michael Gorr [3]. Suppose D writes to P threatening to expose P's theft unless D pays him money, and that D is not owed money by P. Williams says: