Libellous URLs Are Hilarious. Except That One Time I Nearly Went To Jail

An interesting story today from Nieman Journalism Lab, pointing to the dangers of URL spoofing. The danger, according to Neiman's Andrew Phelps, stems from the fact that many news organizations include the text of headlines in their URLs in order to improve SEO. In many cases, the headline text is superfluous, and the URL works just fine without it. The result? A story from the UK's Independent newspaper that started out with this URL?

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/food-and-drink/kate-middleton-jelly-bean-2269573.html

?went viral, after a prankster tweeted it out as?

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/food-and-drink/utter-PR-fiction-but-people-love-this-shit-so-fuck-it-lets-just-print-it-2269573.html

(Both URLs work just fine.) Embarrassingly, and amusingly, several news organizations including Slate and Nieman itself, fell foul of the prank, assuming that it reflected an error at the Independent. Finally realizing his mistake, Phelps wrote his follow-up story, describing "How URL spoofing can put libelous words into news orgs? mouths"

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