Bomb-making advice easily available on the Internet

'Serious harm or death could occur from attempting to perform any of the methods in this publication,'says the warning at the beginning of the Terrorist's Cookbook. It adds, "this is merely for reading enjoyment, and is not intended for actual use!!"

'Serious harm or death could occur from attempting to perform any of the methods in this publication,'says the warning at the beginning of the Terrorist's Cookbook. It adds, "this is merely for reading enjoyment, and is not intended for actual use!!"

David Copeland obviously took note of the first and ignored the second, more important, of those two warnings after he downloaded the file from an Internet Web site at a cybercafe in Victoria, London. He also downloaded 'How to Make Bombs: Book Two', and was able to take them home to study and learn from.

The ease with which he found that information (which is still out there on the Web in multiple locations) is indicative of the problem that legislators and even champions of the Internet have with the untrammeled nature of the global network.

Some argue that because three people died as a result of Copeland's Web surfing, it is right to limit the sort of information that can be put on the Net. American legislators have repeatedly mentioned the presence of bomb-making instructions as a reason to limit what can be put on the Net. In the US, though, such attempts collapse in front of the First Amendment guaranteeing freedom of speech.

But what about applying that more strongly in the UK? Malcolm Hetty, a British Web designer who heads the Campaign against Censorship of the Internet, says that such attempts are inspired by 'fear of the new ', as well as being retrograde.

"It's a kneejerk reaction just to say that because he got his information from the Net, you should legislate the Net. In fact there was nothing he found out which you couldn't get from an A-level chemistry book or in a library."

Even if legislation was somehow brought in the problem would then be, who decides what can be posted on the Net? "Think of what it would be like if everything had to be approved," said Mr Hetty.

Even so, the high-profile nature of other Internet cases such as the child pornography conviction of Paul Gadd - aka Gary Glitter - is likely to be used by legislators as a reason for trying to hold back the Net.

Yet in an interesting corollary, in Japan on Thursday a member of the Aum Shinri Kyo cult who caused the deaths of eight people by releasing sarin nerve gas on the Tokyo subway was sentenced to death. The incident happened in 1995 - long before the Internet would have been useful to learn how to make sarin. If it happened today, would people blame the cult or the Net?