What happened to the good old days when making false prophecies was punishable by death?

Back in the days of the Old Testament, you can be sure that people thought twice before trying to spread fear through an "end of the world" prophecy. But now, we just let it all pass, and we have countless end of the world and doomsday predictions circulating around. Normally, I would not have minded, but the sad part is that there are people who genuinely believe that the world will end on May 21 2011 and the like. It's time to discourage behaviour that causes this sort of public hysteria.