I’m sure this has come up before, I just wasn’t able to find it.
I’m not looking for legal advice. I’m just interested in the gengeral principals.
I just did a google search for “how to make a bomb” and I got 39 million hits.
I’ve come across many sites and forum postings with step by step directions for various illegal activites and I’m wondering about the legal responsibility of the people who make these sites and postings.
If so-and-so posts instructions for how to do something illegal and someone follows those instructions and then gets themselves arrested and under questioning says they learned how to do it from so-and-so’s website, is so-and-so an accessory to that crime?
Given the sheer volume of this type of information on the Internet, it would seem not, but things aren’t always what they seem.
First amendment protections generally apply, as long as the source is not advocating commiting a specific crime.
However, there is the infamous case of “Hit Man ,” a book which served as a blueprint for a triple-homicide in Maryland. A federal appeals court ruled that the publishers could be held liable, and they later settled a civil suit with the victims’ families and agreed to stop publishing the book.
I’m not sure myself, but is it illegal to make a bomb? I know people who play around with various incendiary devices in the privacy of their back forty. Is it illegal?
The bomb thing is just what grabbed my attention. I really don’t know if making bombs is illegal per se, but it seems enough of a grey area that I wondered.
I know anyone can be sued for any reason; I was just curious about the criminal issues. The Hit Man case was a civil suit and it seems like almost anything is possible when it comes to civil action.
Case law is pretty clear that you can describe how to build a bomb (or commit other dangerous and/or unlawful acts) without being subject to criminal prosecution. The most pertinent caselaw, I believe, is the 1969 Supreme Court decision in Brandenburg v. Ohio. The Court held that the government cannot “forbid advocacy of the use of force or of law violation” unless “such advocacy is directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action.”
Civil liability is a different story however, since there is ample case law of manufacturers being held liable for their products being used to cause harm (eg, Kelley v. R.G. Industries, in which a gun manufacturer was found liable for injuries resulting from their criminal misuse).