And actually, the existence of legitimate reasons to frame content, only makes my argument against “services” like Ow.ly (who still hasn’t removed their framing despite saying they would) that much stronger.

If I want to prevent Owly from stealing my content, I have to use a frame-busting script which also interferes with the legitimate uses of framing.

Google only displays a small description of your content rather than the entire page. Yeah, they do use frames in showing the cached version and their image search which I’m not crazy about, but the bulk of what they do (and what they make their money from) is just aggregating a lot of small snippets of your content, not the entire page.

While I think the steps you mention of detecting search engine bots etc, would definitely be a step up for a lot of these sites, that doesn’t cut it in my book. The issue is that a frame takes my content (w/out my permission) and puts it in someone else’s wrapper (often times with ads on it).

Yes, busting the frame is a good idea, but that doesn’t make framing a site ok. If I took your pimptastic SEO tools and somehow framed them or put my logo over yours and then sold it as my own or made it available for free with some ads plastered across the top, I’m guessing you wouldn’t be real pleased with me.

In my mind, framejacking is essentially the same thing. And don’t worry, it’s always ok to disagree with me, it just means you’re probably wrong

If you’re the company providing the frame, make sure you give users options to display or not display it, and make sure you detect whether or not it’s a search engine or browser, so you can 301 the search engine bot directly to the site (no frames). Personally, I think it’s a useful and interesting service for users, and I still get access to the content (the publisher’s content). If everyone had such a strict attitude about content, particularly content aggregation, the Internet would suck big time.

With all that being said, still love you Ben, even if we don’t 100% agree on this

But again, they are definitely framing and unless they have an agreement with those sites, I would consider that theft.

@John, I’m not arguing against Digg or TwitPwr, I’m arguing against them framing MY content.

Yes, Google uses frames and yes, in my mind that is content theft. They aren’t placing their ads on my content which TwitPwr was doing but I would still say it’s content theft.

This is nothing like someone reading a paper that’s sitting around. This is the equivalent of someone taking the New York Times, putting their heading and ads at the top, and redistributing it. If you think the Times would sit back and let that happen you’re absolutely wrong.

As I’ve said before, it IS easy enough to prevent sites from framing your content. However, even if you leave your possessions sitting on your front porch, it’s still theft if someone comes up and takes something that doesn’t belong to them.

Just because someone isn’t preventing their site from being framed, does NOT give any other site the right to steal that content.

Google uses a frame sometimes, not just the cache but images too, are you complaining about them too?

Theft is the act of stealing someone else’s property. And what makes something your property? The knowledge that if you take a certain care and interest in protecting something for your exclusive use, that it is yours. If you were to leave a newspaper in a doctors waiting room would you accuse someone who read it of theft? No of course not, you may risk your personal reputation and ask for it’s return but some would say that’s not the spirit of human coexistence.

It is easy to protect your “possessions” should you want. After reading your paper in the waiting room you could take it with you, that would ensure no one reads it and give you the satisfaction you are seeking.

And if you don’t want your web page “hijacked” by a frame then all you have to do is target=_top and there’s an end to it. You may lose friends and certainly readers but you can at least be satisfied that no one is stealing your content.

The issue with the Diggbar was a bit different since they did use the submission title as the title of their framed page. However, Digg has since made several changes to their Diggbar which will negate any SEO impact and will only display the framed pages to logged in Digg users.

That is a MUCH better method than the one TwitPwr is using although it is still framing content, which as I’ve said several times, I view as theft.

Couldn’t this have more severe ramifications than just somebody using an entire page of yours and profiting from it? For instance, Digg is pretty popular, and TwitPwr could be as well. Because of the trust of those domains, isn’t it possible that the framed pages could actually outrank your own page? Google doesn’t seem to be fixed in the way that they handle framed pages/sites, and I just think that the possibility remains that a twitpwr page could become indexed, and actually rob you of direct search engine traffic in some situations.

That’s worse than a scraper site, because scraper sites have a very short shelf life… This is really disappointing coming from somebody with such a big name.