Yeah Richard, this does resemble a case of the POST traumatic stress syndrome reported by Jerry Asher way back. Especially since it seems that the size (of the form content) might matter. I wonder what became of the two-year-old plans to find a remedy for that sickness.
But, like you say, that was an IE-related bug while this seems to be a browser-unspecific bug - I couldn't post the form with any browser. I tried editing the page with Netscape 7.1, but got the same error. Following David Walker's advice, I also disabled "Show friendly HTTP error messages" in IE, to no avail.
Thanks!