I don't think it is illegal. If the words are changed but the meaning remains same as the original article, why would it be illegal?
Lewl as long as your article is unique you are not having issues with copyrights. You can spin the article or you can re-write it just make sure it's unique.
For all those people saying spinning is legal, you are wrong. Read a few cases. Taking someone else's copyrighted material and changing a few synonyms to keep essentially the same meaning. Spinning is not necessarily always infringement, it depends on the facts. Read the Wikipedia article at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paraphrasing_of_copyrighted_material
Its sorta of a moot point because if you are doing it your are a complete dumbass in the first place.
That would depend on your definition of "spinning". Rewriting an existing article? Sure. The proper way to refer to someone else's article is to link to it, maybe quoting a few relevant phrases so you can agree or rebut in place. But rewriting it to say something different? That's putting a different spin on the subject, and there's nothing wrong with doing that.
Did anyone besides Rukbat bother to research the topic? The answer to spinning's legality is plastered all over the Internet. In three seconds, I found this: https://www.legalzoom.com/articles/plagiarism-what-is-it-exactly Spinning is paraphrasing. Paraphrasing without credit is plagiarism. Plagiarism "is illegal if it infringes an author's intellectual property rights." Nuff said?