Webmaster goes to prison for posting words

[Corn]

Limitation of speech in any manner adversely affects the market place of ideas, which is the very foundation of innovation. To limit speech is to limit innovation, innovation is an american ideal, so to limit it would be to run against our own ideals.

So how do you feel about slander, libel, yelling "fire" in a crowed movie theater, verbalized or written threats? These are also "ideas", should they also be legal? What about if someone simply wrote on a piece of paper "I have a gun, hand over your money" and handed it to a bank teller, store clerk, or just someone walking down the street? What if he only had that piece of paper and no gun? I mean, it's only "words", right?

 

[Jmman]

Everyone here is bashing the Patriot Act, but doesn't that snippet say he was prosecuted under a 1997 law, and not the Patriot Act??

 

[Linflas]

newsmakers Sherman Austin is looking forward to a year in federal prison with the kind of equanimity that most people reserve for a trip to the doctor's office.
The 20-year-old anarchist was charged with distributing information about Molotov cocktails and "Drano bombs" on his Web site, Raisethefist.com. Under a 1997 federal law championed by Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., it is illegal to publish such instructions with the intent that readers commit "a federal crime of violence."

During the floor debate over the legislation, which the Senate approved unanimously, Feinstein said children "are getting instructions for making these explosives from the Internet...In February, in upstate New York, three 13-year-old boys were charged with plotting to set off a homemade bomb in their junior high school, using bomb-making plans which they had gotten off of the Internet...My amendment gives law enforcement another tool in the war against terrorism, to combat the flow of information that is used to teach terrorists and other criminals how to build bombs."

Austin appears to be the first person so far convicted under the controversial law, which some First Amendment scholars say may violate the right to freedom of expression. Earlier this year, Austin pleaded guilty, and last week a federal judge in Los Angeles sentenced him to one year in prison.

CNET News.com interviewed Austin by telephone from a guest house where he is staying in Long Beach, Calif.

The law he was charged under was passed in 1997 which by my math is 4 years before 9/11/01. while I am not a big fan of the Patriot Act it has nothing to do with this case.