On February 2, 1999 a federal grand jury in Oregon found that the infamous "Nuremberg Files" Web site amounted to death threats akin to wanted posters. This Web site, which listed the names of physicians who perform abortions, gained notoriety after the murder of Dr. Barnett Slepian. Dr. Slepian's name was listed on the site, and was crossed out shortly after his death. Slepian's name became the third murdered doctor whose name appeared on the site in "wanted poster"format. The jury in Planned Parenthood v. ACLA found that the publication of names and personal information, including home addresses and names of spouses and children, could be defined as a threat by a reasonable person.

U.S. District Judge Robert E. Jones ordered the American Coalition of Life Activists, Advocates for Life Ministries and twelve individual defendants, to pay $107 million in damages. Pro-choice advocates petitioned to have the Web site shut down, but the site was closed by MindSpring, the Atlanta-based Internet Service Provider which hosted the site, before the court could rule. The Web site's creator, Neal Horsley, vowed to seek an alternative ISP to air his anti-abortion views, but some attempts to post the site elsewhere or mirror the site overseas have already failed.

Later in February, Judge Jones enjoined pro-life advocates from contributing to the site, but admitted that he had no jurisdiction over the site itself because Horsley, from Carrollton, Georgia, was not a defendant. Defendants plan to appeal on First Amendment grounds, leaving the 9th Circuit to decide.

Modern technology has facilitated and enhanced the diversity of the marketplace of ideas. Before the Internet's eruption into popular culture, it was much more difficult for geographically separated individuals to engage in a dialogue about current events. Now access to the Internet is everywhere and restrictions on who and what can go on-line are minimal. In short, the Internet is bringing people with very different ideas, backgrounds, opinions, and motives closer together. This result would seem to effectuate what the authors of the Constitution envisioned when they created the First Amendment: an open discourse among the People with minimal restrictions on content. The Internet, on the other hand, may be working too well. In other words, immediate and basically uncensored information in a medium that may be accessed by anyone, anywhere, at anytime may not be as worthwhile as once believed.