Diamond mega-conglomerate, South Africa-based De Beers, is doing its best to shut down the domain Joker.com, a spoof website, which recently published a fake De Beers ad. Joker.com is similar to The Onion in that is a parody news and pop culture website, and also publishes free newspaper-style inserts.

One such insert, a 14-page insert that featured such made up stories as the end of the Iraq war, the passing of a maximum wage law by Congress, and similar, also included other parody ads in addition to the one for De Beers, but so far, the diamond giant is the only one complaining.

Not that libel is not a serious thing, but the question of whether or not parodies constitute libel is one of those issues that has existed for a long time, and has always been decided on a case by case basis. When it comes to legalities, there is a provision in the federal Communications Act that protects domain name registrars and Web hosting providers from being held legally liable in most cases, but De Beers is not the only company that has tried to have a website shut down, it is just one of the most recent.

As the Internet rapidly eclipses traditional media outlets as the main source of information for many users, the question for corporations and website owners ultimately becomes: when it comes to a joke, how far is to far?