Slashdot Mirror
CNN Doesn't Like Being Spoofed
scrm writes "After being online for only a week, the Fake CNN News Generator, a spoof of the CNN.com website, has been shut down after CNN sent them a threatening legal letter alleging copyright and trademark infringement. (Although the real reason is more likely to be because people were actually believing that the fake stories were true.)"
.. if you go there. Better have a browser with brains or enjoy "Hot Adult Entertainment" ads.
How irritating.
..Bound to happen sooner or later.
I checked spo0fed.com (or whatever the URL is) yesterday and by the way the letter read (on their front page, not from CNN but from Spo0fed itself) was that they took it down because people were using it to make defamoratory 'news stories' about people.
Still, it was a dead-on generator. If it weren't for the URL, one might not've known it was fake.
I never could get to see the archives of generated stories though...
Although the real reason is more likely to be because people were actually believing that the fake stories were true.
Oh, come on. The web site generated pages that included the CNN logo! The real reason is obviously because whomever created this little toy was using the CNN logo without permission.
This falls into exactly the same category as the Dow Chemical thing from a few weeks back. Parody is fine as long as you don't actually use somebody else's logo. That crosses the line from fair use into trademark infringement.
Comments including the phrase "chilling effect" will be summarily ignored for the senseless drivel that they are.
I write in my journal
What would have been really cool is if the generator page used your IP address to determine your location, then used a local university name in the "story". I don't know if that's how it was done, but it would be much more consistent in a given area than randomly generating a college name.
that that is is that that is not is not