McGinley contended that the fake De Beers ad wasn't a parody and instead contained "offensive, disparaging, damaging and inaccurate statements" about the company. He warned that if Joker.com didn't disable the spoofed site, the registar itself would be considered a primary infringer by De Beers and would be subject to any legal action that the company decided to take to protect its "valuable name and goodwill."

Neither De Beers officials nor McGinley have responded to requests for comment on the matter. Officials at Joker.com also couldn't be reached for comment, but the fake Times site hadn't been taken down as of Thursday afternoon.

The EFF, a digital-rights advocacy group based in San Francisco, argues that threats such as the ones made by De Beers amount to little more than attempted censorship of protected speech. Last week, the EFF sent a letter to McGinley describing the claims made by De Beers against Joker.com as "improper and baseless" and calling for the diamond company to withdraw its demands.

In an interview, EFF senior staff attorney Matthew Zimmerman said that U.S. law gives ample protection to Internet intermediaries in situations such as the one involving the nytimes-se.com site. The CDA "provides blanket immunity in a wide range of areas" to companies such as Joker.com, Zimmerman claimed.

He added that although both Joker.com and De Beers are based outside the U.S., it may still be possible to apply the CDA in this case because of the fact that the diamond company appears to be going after the authors of the spoof site for alleged violations of U.S. trademark laws -- and by extension threatening Joker.com under the same statutes.