Death Note witch trials

There's a popular anime series called Death Note whose plot revolves around a magical notebook (the "Death Note" of the title).  Humans whose names are written in the Death Note, die.  The book falls into the hands of a high-school student who uses it to go on a killing spree - starting with criminals he thinks the world will be better off without, but quickly moving on to killing the police too in order to protect himself from discovery.  This series is currently being shown on US television in translation, and it's already been very popular in the original Japanese, and as happens with popular anime series, there've been licensed products based on it.  Including notebooks styled to look like the Death Note.

Inevitably, a certain number of US schoolchildren are buying these notebooks and writing names in them.  And, probably also inevitably, this has upset school authorities and there've been occasional news stories about it.  The most recent one (late February 2008) is of a student in South Carolina removed from school (I think that means suspended, but the news report says "removed") for possession of such a notebook.  See also the Anime News Network item on it.  I don't have other links ready to hand but am pretty sure this isn't the first similar story I've seen.

Now, if you had just a regular notebook and you wrote a list of names in it, that wouldn't raise any eyebrows at school.  Even if you wrote "I hate these people and wish they would die:" above the list, I doubt it would provoke a response quite as severe, though what with the current War On Teenagers it's still probably possible to get suspended just for that in some parts of the USA, too.  What I'm interested in is that the book looked like the Death Note in the TV show...  so that writing a name in there isn't just like writing in your diary that you wish someone would die, it's actually on some level casting a spell (or appearing to do so) to cause the death.  This situation looks like someone trying (seriously or not) to kill someone else by witchcraft, and being punished for that.

So, isn't this situation pretty much exactly the same thing as a witch trial?

Also worth noting is the conclusion of that SC Now article I linked:  parents should "talk with their children about what he or she watches on television and the Internet." Not, y'know, talk to kids about the difference between fantasy and reality, or about whether it's okay to kill people.  Television has to be the real threat.  And the Internet, even though it's completely irrelevant.