I’m not wrong. You, my friend, are copy/pasting from the google search preview from "MyLawQuestions.com" - which is, well, not disreputable or anything, but designed to distill things down to a basic level of understanding. It is what it is.
Based on these sources, below, I am going to label myself the exact opposite of wrong:
18 U.S. Code Chapter 41 - EXTORTION AND THREATS
18 U.S. Code § 873 - Blackmail
Whoever, under a threat of informing, or as a consideration for not informing, against any violation of any law of the United States, demands or receives any money or other valuable thing, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than one year, or both.
All other sub-chapters of 18 USC 41 refer to threats of violence or demands of ransom. Erego, I concluded, rightly I think, that Blackmail is specifically NOT the threat of violence but rather the threat of revealing embarassing or compromising information.
But you know, what's one source over another, so:
Miriam Webster:
extort
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ex·tort | \ ik-ˈstȯrt \
extorted; extorting; extorts
: to obtain from a person by force, intimidation, or undue or illegal power
:
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blackmail
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black·mail | \ ˈblak-ˌmāl \
1
: a tribute anciently exacted on the Scottish border by plundering chiefs in exchange for immunity from pillage
[this definition may explain why modern-day blackmail is sometimes conflated with threats of violence]
2a
: extortion or coercion by threats especially of public exposure or criminal prosecution
From Lexico (Oxford English):
extort
VERB
- Obtain (something) by force, threats, or other unfair means.
blackmail
NOUN
- The action, treated as a criminal offence, of demanding payment or another benefit from someone in return for not revealing compromising or damaging information about them.
Oxford Learner's Dictionaries (you know, for kids):
extortion
noun
the crime of making somebody give you something by threatening them
blackmail
noun
the crime of demanding money from a person by threatening to tell somebody else a secret about them
Unless Aiden is threatening to release those classroom pictures of Sophia exposing herself, he's not committing blackmail. And, duh, silly me, he doesn't have those photos, does he?