Fake CNN.com Page Generator shuts down

A Web site that
published fake news stories that appeared to be from CNN has
been taken offline after the network threaten legal action for
copyright and trademark infringement,

Wired News reports. The
Fake CNN News Generator created pages with CNN’s logos, live
links and banner ads, and the stories’ URLs appeared to
originate from the CNN Web site, though they including an ‘@’
symbol, a common spoofing trick (See
a screenshot). The site sparked a lot of controversy after
some of the faked news stories were picked up by media outlets
and reported as real. Mentions of phony stories about the death
of musician Dave Matthews and the Olsen twins attending various
local universities, for example, appeared in a number of local
newspapers, as well as regional radio and TV news reports.
Meanwhile, a similar site,
FakedNews, which generates stories appearing to come from
CNN, CNet and MTV, continues operating.