Blackmail

Blackmail is an act, often a crime, involving unjustified threats to make a gain (commonly money or property) or cause loss to another unless a demand is met. Essentially, it is coercion involving threats to reveal substantially true or false information about a person to the public, a family member, or associates, or threats of physical harm or criminal prosecution. It is the name of a statutory offence in the United States of America, England and Wales, Northern Ireland, Victoria, Australia, and Tasmania, and has been used as a convenient way of referring to other offences, but was not a term of art in English law before 1968. It originally meant payments rendered by settlers in the Counties of England bordering Scotland to chieftains and the like in the Scottish Lowlands, in exchange for protection from Scottish thieves and marauders into England.

Blackmail may also be considered a form of extortion. Although the two are generally synonymous, extortion is the taking of personal property by threat of future harm. Blackmail is the use of threats to prevent another from engaging in a lawful occupation and writing libelous letters or letters that provoke a breach of the peace, as well as use of intimidation for purposes of collecting an unpaid debt. Some US states distinguish the offenses by requiring that blackmail be in writing. In some jurisdictions, the offence of blackmail is often carried out during the act of robbery. This occurs when an offender makes a threat of immediate violence towards someone in order to make a gain as part of a theft. For example, the threat of "Your money, or your life!" is an unlawful threat of violence in order to gain property.

Blackmail (2015 film)

Blackmail is a 2015 Bangladeshi film. The film is directed by Anonno Mamun and the cast includes Anisur Rahman Milon, Eamin Haque Bobby and Moushumi Hamid.

Cast

Production

The first teaser was released on 10 December 2014.

References

Blackmail (Law & Order)

Blackmail is the twelfth episode of the twentieth season of the television series Law & Order. It aired on NBC January 15, 2010.

Plot

When Detectives Lupo and Bernard find journalist Megan Kerr dead in an abandoned apartment, the detectives learn of a relationship between the victim and daytime talk show host Vanessa Carville (Samantha Bee). Upon further investigation, the detectives encounter Carville in a meeting with DA Jack McCoy, and Carville admits to a series of workplace affairs with other women and a blackmail threat leaving the detectives suspicious of Carville and her co-workers.

Production

"Blackmail" was written by Ed Zuckerman and Matthew McGough, and directed by Marc Levin. The episode was based on a real-life scandal involving late night talk show host David Letterman. In October 2009, Letterman announced on the Late Show with David Letterman that someone was attempting to blackmail him by threatening to reveal evidence of a sexual relationship Letterman was having with a female employee. Samantha Bee, a correspondent on the Comedy Central television series The Daily Show, guest starred as Vanessa Carville, a celebrity talk show host who becomes the victim of extortion.

Vice

Vice is a practice, behavior, or habit generally considered immoral, sinful, criminal, rude, depraved, or degrading in the associated society. In more minor usage, vice can refer to a fault, a negative character trait, a defect, an infirmity, or a bad or unhealthy habit (such as an addiction to smoking). Vices are usually associated with a transgression in a person's character or temperament rather than their morality. Synonyms for vice include fault, sin, depravity, iniquity, wickedness, and corruption.

The opposite of vice is virtue.

Etymology

The modern English term that best captures its original meaning is the word vicious, which means "full of vice". In this sense, the word vice comes from the Latin word vitium, meaning "failing or defect".

(This meaning is completely separate from the word vice when used as an official title to indicate a deputy, substitute or subordinate, as in vice president, vice-chancellor or viceroy. The etymology of this usage derives from the Latin prefix vice-, meaning "in the place of".)

Vice (character)

Vice is a stock character of the medieval morality plays. While the main character of these plays was representative of every human being (and usually named Mankind, Everyman, or some other generalizing of humanity at large), the other characters were representatives of (and usually named after) personified virtues or vices who sought to win control of man's soul. While the virtues in a morality play can be seen as messengers of God, the vices were viewed as messengers of the Devil.

Over time, the morality plays began to include many lesser vices on stage and one chief vice figure, a tempter above all the others, who was called simply the Vice. Originally, the Vice was a serious role, but over time his part became largely comical. Scholar F.P. Wilson notes, “Whatever else the Vice may be, he is always the chief comic character”; this comic portrayal is explained thus: "In theory there is no reason why vice should not be put upon the stage with the same seriousness and sobriety as virtue: in practice, however, dramatists, and many a preacher, knew that men and women will not listen for long to unrelieved gravity”. In his Declaration of Popish Impostures from 1603, Bishop Harsnet wrote that "It was a pretty part in the old church plays, when the nimble Vice would skip up nimbly like a Jacke-an-apes into the Devil's necke, and ride the devil a course, and belabour him with his wooden dagger, till he made him roar, whereat the people would laugh to see the Devil so Vice-haunted.”

Law & Order: UK

Law & Order: UK is a British police procedural and legal television programme, adapted from the American series Law & Order. Financed by the production companies Kudos Film and Television, Wolf Films, and Universal Media Studios, the series originally starred Bradley Walsh and Ben Daniels, though the latter was succeeded by Dominic Rowan. This is the first American drama television series to be adapted for British television, while the episodes are adapted from scripts and episodes of the parent series.

Premise

"In the criminal justice system, the people are represented by two separate yet equally important groups: The police who investigate crime, and the Crown Prosecutors who prosecute the offenders. These are their stories."

Law & Order: UK is a British adaptation of the American Law & Order franchise, one of the most successful brands in American primetime television.Law & Order: UK is based in London and duplicates the episode format of the original series.

The first half focuses on the perpetration of a crime and the related police investigation typically culminating in an arrest, while the second half follows the legal and court proceedings in an effort to convict the suspect. The show dwells little on the characters' back-stories or social lives, focusing mainly on their lives at work.