In short, I made a fake article, the word about it got out and unless I remove it as soon as possible legal action will be taken against me..

Any advice where I should take this from here? I figured someone would have some help since this is where I found the site itself..

Umm…really?  Nothing else but this?  No links or site details??

www.Msbnews.net, sorry I am not supposed to spread the link to the article itself to anyone who cannot remove or help remove it,

The site itself has been lingering around the internet, you can usually find it on www.Monkeydoo.com/fakenews.php

The major problem I am having is contacting a moderator, the site is made to be believable and the website shares its name with a British real news website and the moderator I do know about hasn’t responded.

How did you get it on the site?  And why can’t you remove it yourself?

Well without knowing what you’ve said, it’s a bit hard to give advice (not that I don’t appreciate the reasons for your reluctance), but I shall not let a little thing like that stop me (it never has before):

A) If you’ve posted a completely made up story, don’t sweat it. As highlighted here, that sort of thing goes on all the time.

B) If you’ve posted something about a person or organisation (such as a company), hope they find it funny. Most people and corporations have better things to do than sue people for making obvious jokes. South Park can get away with comparing Ben Affleck to a bum-faced boy, or insinuate that Angelina Jolie has pubic lice because it is obviously not intended to be taken seriously.

C) If you’ve said something malicious about a person or organisation, hope they are either too busy, too poor or not interested in pursuing it. General insults could be defended as a matter of freedom of speech, though trying to pass off Angelina Jolie having an STD as fact rather than humour may get you into a lot of hot water.

D) If you’ve said something actually damaging about a person or organisation, hope they’ll be lenient when you throw yourself on their mercy. Starting a news story that someone found a dirty syringe needle in a “McWendy King” burger, or Famous-Person-X is a paedophile is neither satire nor free-speech protected opinion, and in this case you are royally screwed if they pick up on it.

Well, I do not own the website, and you can freely upload to it.

So is it possible to contact the moderator and get the file itself removed? Are they under any obligation to do so? But what it really comes down to is does anyone know the moderator, where I can find them, so far I have contacted the moderator the supposedly owns the site, but have gotten no response..

Well flat out, I called one of my professors a pedophile, I cannot go into any more detail than that..

I don’t follow, is msbnews a fake website?  How can a website share its name with another entity? (Or do you mean msbnews.net is a spoof of msbnews.com or something like that?)

But you uploaded the fake story to a “fake news” page on monkeypoo.com or directly to the msbnews.net site?  If it was the former, I don’t see how it’d be your fault if anyone took it seriously.  If the latter, was your upload anonymous (and not just technically, but rather is it possible to figure out your identity?

If you are still anonymous, you could just walk away (I recommend whistling, that way everyone will know you had nothing to do with it).  You could also contact the prof personally and apologize profusely. 

I’m not sure how an accusation like that can be seen as “humorous” by anyone, but you can hope he’s more understanding than I am.

If this is the article, you might be in some serious trouble…
But how does anybody know it is you who wrote and posted it?

Btw,it’s never funny to accuse someone of being a pedophile, I hope you learned a lesson here.

Yep that is it, its my younger brother’s school, I sent it to him apparently he sent to everyone at his school, he gets the hatchet and tells that I made which is the real offense.

So, either way I’m in a problem, the school said they will drop charges for slander against me and not expel him if we can remove the website in a short time.

Otherwise the only proof they have I did is I I’m willing to take the bullet for family…

As for a lesson? Never trust someone younger than you, a joke between 2 brothers can really be a pain in the ass if one can’t keep his mouth shut.

Ooh, option D!

Firstly, whether the site has any obligation to you depends on their terms and conditions. If you assign control of the material to them by posting it then they would not be compelled to remove it at your request. They would, however, still have an obligation to remain in the law and if they refused to withdraw it after being told it is libellous, would be equally liable to a lawsuit.

Secondly, your admission is not the only proof as the site and your ISP will no doubt have logs that can identify the source of the material, which can be subpoenaed if the school or professor pursue this. Your only way out is to comply with the school’s demands as quickly and fully as possible.

Thirdly, a fake posting on a publicly accessible site is not “a joke between two brothers”. Even if the story had gone unnoticed then, it may have turned up unexpectedly any time your victim was subject to scrutiny by another party, e.g. when job-hunting, etc.

Fourthly, I can’t post what my opinion of you is, since it is against forum rules, but I hope the person in question sues you to penury.

That said, msbnews.net was registered by tucows.com. If you go to http://resellers.tucows.com/whois/index_html and look up who owns the msbnews.net domain it will give you contact details for the domain owner. If you explain yourself to him, he may remove the post for you.

Well, thanks for the help, I just hope that they are willing to remove it. I just need to make sure my brother doesn’t get in trouble, they would probably avoid pressing charges against me because it would probably be to much negative publicity for the few remaining days he is in school…

Well for the ISP, I used a internet cafe’ (I moved everything back a few days ago) so it really cannot be traced back to me, but hes still on the chopping block and I’m sure if I just abandon him I’ll be finding a new place to stay this summer.

Well said, David.

I, too, have a hard time understanding why someone would post something like that to a public website and then think that it is just between him and his younger brother.  And also why he would think that anyone (younger brother or not) would only keep it to himself.  Secrets are only really secrets if you don’t tell anyone.  Never trust anyone not to tell anyone else.

You better get cracking, Dr.Pancakes.