According to many webmasters, the DiggBar was an attempt to steal search engine benefit by having all outgoing links point to digg.com rather than the source domain of the content. It also created questions about potential advertising in the Diggbar and possible visitor interference by encouraging people to link to the Digg version of the story rather than original page.

After an outcry from webmasters, Digg scaled back the use of the Diggbar so search engines and non-logged-in users wouldn’t see it. A year later, in 2010, Digg announced they were killing it completely as part of an overhaul of the site.

All seemed quiet from Digg on this issue, that is, until last month with they announced a new Facebook social reader that would include a similar frame. While, at first, it was just for logged-in users, a week later Digg announced they were extending it to all users, logged in or not.

However, this time there’s been no great outcry from webmasters. In fact, I only learned about the DiggBar’s return last week on accident when I visited Digg out of curiosity.

The DiggBar has returned but does anyone care? If not, what makes this one different?

The Fall of Digg, the Rebirth of DiggBar

The removal of the Diggbar in 2010 came at the same time Digg was re-launching its site. However, the relaunch, dubbed “v4″ was an unmitigated disaster, wildly unpopular with visitors and regarded as a community killer.

Digg’s traffic and audience plummeted. Though initially the drop was blamed on the removal of Diggbar reducing the number of pageviews, the trend continued well past the loss of Diggbar. Other social news sites, most notably Reddit, rose in prominence at the same time.

According to Alexa (admittedly not the most reliable source) Digg traffic stabilized some in 2011 but has not grown and seems to have continued to drop (albeit more slowly) according to some metrics. Either way, Digg remains well below it’s pre-v4 traffic levels.

Digg is clearly not the poster child of social news that it once was and it appears that this partnership with Facebook, which is from where this new DiggBar arises, is an attempt to right the ship. However, if Alexa is to be remotely trusted, the early indications are that it isn’t helping much, if at all.

However, that doesn’t mean webmasters can or should ignore it as some things simply haven’t changed at all.

Sympathy for the Devil

To put it bluntly, DiggBar was wrong in 2009 and it is just as wrong in 2012. Not only does it raise serious SEO, copyright and trademark issues, but it also comes with ethical problems, namely whether Digg should pad its own traffic stats and extend its feature set at the risk of harming the webmasters they are supposedly linking to?

However, despite the fact the new DiggBar raises all of the same issues as the one in 2012 did, there’s been almost no outcry over it. In fact, the “frictionless” integration with Facebook has been more controversial than the bar itself and even that controversy has been fairly muted, largely because Facebook has many partners other than Digg in the program (though most don’t use frames).

This lack of outcry is due in part to the fact that framing simply isn’t the hot button issue it was three years ago. However, a likely more important factor is that the Digg that existed in 2009 is not the one that exists in 2012.

Webmasters simply don’t care about Digg. The Digg buttons are almost all gone, talk of the “Digg Effect” has died down and no one is paying much attention to what Digg is doing, good or bad.

This is a large part of why, despite Digg doing largely the exact same thing it did in 2009, almost no one has taken notice. In 2009, the DiggBar was mentioned in articles Wired, PC World and Mashable just to name three, the new one has barely been mentioned at all outside of its connection with Facebook.

The question isn’t so much “Why isn’t the world taking notice?” but “Should it?”

Standing Up to Diggbar 2

To be clear, Digg is still a very large site that receives millions of visits per month and is capable of driving a great deal of traffic and search engine reputation to a site. As such, there is still plenty the new DiggBar can do to either harm webmasters or at least limit the benefit they get from what should a great deal of exposure.

However, as the recent SOPA/PIPA protests showed, gathering a large protest against something requires a feeling of importance and Digg, simply put, doesn’t feel important. As such, the best thing concerned webmasters can do is not just write about it, but also contact Digg directly.

We can’t and shouldn’t expect the same level of protests we saw in 2009. The climate, in particular as it relates to Digg, is just too different.

Fortunately though, one way the climate hasn’t changed is in the wider acceptance of framed toolbars. The first DiggBar did not start a trend. Though some other sites do use toolbars in a limited capacity, such as Hootsuite and StumbleUpon, the use isn’t widespread nor does it appear to be growing.

In short, Digg didn’t start a trend in 2009 and it isn’t likely to start one now.

Bottom Line

If I worked for Digg, I wouldn’t be relieved that the new DiggBar escaped controversy, I’d be worried. The ethics and morals around framing have not changed drastically in the past three years, as seen by the lack of growth in the technique. As such, the big change has to relate to Digg itself and going from being the center of the universe to being ignored is not a positive change.

But even though there isn’t an outcry, my hope is that Digg will, once again, do the right thing and kill the DiggBar a second time. It hurts the websites that it links to and it seems to be done to implement a social reading service few want.

DiggBar may be back from the dead, but it’s time to rebury it and, this time, make it for good.

Earlier this month, Digg announced that they were killing off the Diggbar, calling it “Bad for the Internet“.

The controversial tool, which got its start almost exactly a year before, caused a storm of accusation of content theft as it placed a frame above sites it linked to, both adding a Digg logo and other Digg elements, but also redirecting the content to a URL on Digg’s domain. Though Digg made changes to mitigate those concerns, many of them remained until the pending demise of the bar was announced.

However, even as the Diggbar was stirring controversy and, eventually, dying. Another popular URL shortener was doing much the same thing. Hootsuite, the makers of the popular Twitter clients, used a very similar method with its popular Ow.ly URL shortener.

Today, Hootsuite announced that the social bar at the top of Ow.ly URLs are disappearing and those links will, instead, just forward on to the original URL, as with other shorteners.

However, there is a catch. Hootsuite is also starting up a new URL shortener, Ht.ly, that will continue to use the social bar and Hootsuite users will have the choice between the two services.

The question is whether this will appease those upset about the social bar at all and, if so, what the thoughts will be on the new Ht.ly shortener.

The Problem

The reason content creators are upset about services like the Diggbar and Ht.ly is because framing hurts the original site owner. Not only does it come with potential trademark, copyright and Tortious interference with Business Relationships, all which were raised in the case Washington Post v. TotalNews. (Note: That case was settled out of court.)

But more to the point, content creators object to the fact that such framing creates two URLs for the same content. This can cause confusion for both the search engines, which often pick up the shortened URLs instead of or in addition to the original, and users who may share the shortened link instead of the original. This can hurt a site’s search engine optimization and overall promotion efforts.

While it is unclear if this framing is illegal, the theories mentioned above have never been tested, it is clearly very unpopular with Webmasters and that is why the transition to using both Ow.ly and Ht.ly doesn’t alleviate these concerns. It isn’t the people making the short URLs who are most affected by the change, but the creators they are linking to.

While giving users the choice would make sense if they were only posting their content, URL shorteners are used to share links from all over their Web, including those belonging to people who might object to the framing. In short, the move only shifts some of the responsibility for the framing from Hootsuite to its users. It may alleviate the pressure on Hootsuite, but it does not solve the problem.

Bottom Line

The good news is that, even though it isn’t the best possible announcement, the news overall is good. There will be less content framing over all and it will be interesting to see how many users pick the frame versus the redirected version.

Still, it does seem Hootsuite is dedicated to this idea of framing, at least with some of its URLs but has at least decided to let its users choose. Hopefully the users will choose well, at least when it comes to using other people’s content.

For those who aren’t satisfied, there are still plenty of other great URL shorteners, including the ubiquitous Bit.ly, which redirect to long URL in a way that ensures search engine recognition is passed on and users only use the shortened URL when necessary, such as with Twitter.

URL shortening may be a necessary evil now, but there is no reason to make it more harmful than it has to be, especially for content creators.

Yesterday, much to the relief of many who had protested the service, Digg announced that they are axing the DiggBar as part of their service once the new version of their site launches.

This move comes only days after Kevin Rose took over the CEO reigns from Jay Adelson, who resigned to persue other options, and as the widely anticipated new version of the site is still in beta.

The move is going to be widely welcomed by those who protested the original DiggBar for the way it handled content. It also closes a particularly ugly chapter in the history of Digg where its product has caused it several public relations black eyes.

Background

Last year, almost to the day, Digg introduced the DiggBar, its controversial tool that allowed users to Digg, favorite or share an article without leaving the site. It was introduced along with Digg’s then-new URL shortener, which used the digg,com domain.

The DiggBar created a great deal of controversy because of the way it worked, which was to display an iframe over the page itself, displaying the Digg buttons, logos, etc. over the content. This meant that the content appeared to be hosted on the Digg domain, unlike with other URL shorteners, the link was not simply redirected to the source.

This led to accusations of content theft against the DiggBar. Especially worrisome was the potential search engine implications as, at least theoretically, Google and others would not be able to see where the source of the content was and may rank the Digg URL above the original.

Initially Digg defended its product, saying that it wasn’t evil and that they had taken steps to mitigate against the SEO issues. However, a week after that they relented on several key issues, including having the URL simply redirect for non-logged in users.

Controversy once again arose a few months later when Digg, without warning, changed the way the URLs worked to redirect the short URLs to Digg’s landing page and not the source, this led to accusations of hijacking.

The latter issue was undone after Rose returned from vacation, he had said he was gone when the change was made, indicating that the two may have disagreed over the DiggBar and its place, thus making it one of Rose’s top priorities after taking over the CEO position.

Since then, the DiggBar has remained largely unchanged, until yesterday’s announcement.

Bottom Line

No matter the reason though, the DiggBar is dead, or at least will be once the new version of Digg launches shortly. This is a good thing for all the reasons that Rose mentioned in his post but also in that it puts one of Digg’s most controversial elements behind it.

As the new Digg seeks to open up more partnerships with content creators, including having them directly submit their own work, this move seems to be a means to make peace with the content creators who are still upset about the DiggBar and the way it framed their sites.

Hopefully, it will be a lesson other sites learn from. Though, judging from the way Hootsuite and other twitter-oriented URL shorteners are using a similar iframe, it doesn’t seem very likely.

Story Updated: See below

Back in April of this year Digg introduced a URL shortening services that caused a great deal of controversy. The problem was that, unlike other URL shorteners that simply redirected the user to the actual page, Digg’s put the site in a frame that displayed the “DiggBar” across the top. This meant that that Web sites would not receive search engine benefit from Digg links and many felt that Digg was unfairly using other people’s sites to boost traffic to their own domain as well as causing confusion among end users.

When confronted with the legal and ethical issues that come with framing a site, as well as a massive user uproar, Digg backed off and decided to use a standard 301 redirect on all users who were not logged in, including search engines, and reserved the DiggBar for logged in Digg users. Though it wasn’t a perfect compromise, it seemed to appease most.

However, earlier this week, Techruch, Mashable and others began to report that the behavior of Digg’s short URLs began to change. Digg short URLs, for non-logged-in users, were no longer redirecting to the site, but to Digg’s landing page for the article, which in turn links to the full work.

Also immediately the story began to flare up again. However, this time, bloggers weren’t the only ones who were upset. Twitter users and others that had shared digg.com links were angry that there was no notification about the redirect. Digg was getting it from all sides and, once again, Digg appears to be backing down.

But what are the legal issues with this kind of redirect? The answer is, strangely, not many.

Digg, the Redirect and the Law

What is strange about the latest Digg redirect is that, in contrast to the DiggBar, which raised a slew of potential issues, this one raises almost none.

Though Digg does not have a special terms of use for its URL shortening service, its main terms of use does a pretty good job of limiting its liability. Most likely, anyone who used Digg’s URL service and had their links redirected would not have much grounds to sue for.

However, even without the TOS, it is unclear exactly what such a lawsuit would be. The links point to Digg’s server and they have a right to manage and alter their server as they see fit. For example, if you linked to this article but I later redirected it to an update, would that be a violation of the law? Even if the “update” was on another site, it would still be difficult to prove that any law had been broken or damages had been incurred. However, it would probably stop you from linking to this site in the future.

Since the Digg URLs are not framing sites, which raises trademark, copyright and other issues, but is instead linking to the original site, deep linking being completely legal, there isn’t much of an avenue for an attack in the courts. One might argue some form of “interference”, but that seems difficult to argue for many reasons.

However, it seems as if the legal implications are the farthest from people’s minds. For most, it appears that this never was a legal issue so much as it is an issue of ethics and trust.

Trust is Key

The bigger issue with the change is how it affects the trust of those who have put their faith in Digg. This change was made with no public acknowledgement, no notification and no warning. The issue was only discovered after users filed technical support requests with Digg and found that the service was working as intended.

To users that have created Digg URLs and Webmasters that have encouraged the practice, this is a tremendous breach of trust. Digg publicly promised that its URL system would work a specific way and then changed it without warning. Some have likened this to taking a highway that goes to one city and redirecting it to another without warning the cars driving along it. It’s an apt analogy for the most part.

Legally, Digg has the right to do what it wishes with the URLs on its service. It also makes one wonder what would happen if TinyURL, Bitly or any of the other URL shortening services took a similar approach. The backlash, no doubt, would be incredible.

On the Web, trust is everything. Though Digg URLs seem to still be very common no Twitter, if Digg’s service can’t be shown to provide a consistent and predictable service, it seems likely that users will abandon it. On that front, there is no shortage of alternatives.

Bottom Line

In the end, the news appears to be good. Digg’s CEO Kevin Rose sent out a Twitter tweet stating that he was unaware of the change to the Digg URL service and hinted that he was not happy about them. Also, in my testing of Digg.com URLs this morning, most seem to be redirecting straight to the actual site, though a large percentage are still going to Digg. A Digg URL that I created as a test, Also seems to redirect correctly.

However, this incident has only highlighted how unreliable Digg’s service is and how inconsiderate it can be to the wishes of not just Webmasters, but their own users.

I decided to do a comparison search for bit.ly URLs to see how many of those were being posted. The difference was astounding. Though Digg URLs are popular on Twitter, there is currently well over 100x more Bit.ly ones being posted than Digg.com ones. Though most of this is because Bit.ly is now Twitter’s default service for URL shortening, it doesn’t seem likely that Digg is going to gain any ground when its own users can’t trust the URL is going to go where it is supposed to.

In short, Digg has shot itself in the foot in a major way with this blunder, washing away what little trust it had after the DiggBar controversy and making itself even more of an enemy to Webmasters and users alike.

This is not how you build a successful business. I just hope Digg learns that lesson before it is too late.

Update: Digg has posted an official blog entry on the topic. According to the post items that have NOT been submitted to Digg previously will be redirected to the source (why my URL did not work) and all Digg URLs created before the change should now forward to the original source as well, as they were before the change. However, all articles that have been submitted to Digg will have their Digg URL redirect to the Digg landing page.

1: Psystar’s bankruptcy filing to affect Apple’s copyright infringement suit

First off today, the famous “Hackintosh” maker Psystar has filed for bankruptcy protection, likely putting a serious crimp on Apple’s lawsuit against the company, which accuses it of violating copyright in making unofficial Mac computer.

The feud between the two companies has been long and drawn out, including anti-trust and copyright abuse claims by Psystar against Apple, but it seemed that Apple had the upper hand in the lawsuit. Now though, it may be very difficult for Apple to collect any damages that it is awarded as it will likely be treated as an unsecured creditor, meaning most, if not all of its damages will be discharged in the bankruptcy.

2: MGA asks appeals court to halt transfer of Bratz

Next up, the MGA/Mattel case is back in the news today as MGA has filed a petition to halt the transfer of the Bratz line to Mattel while it appeals the lower court ruling,

MGA is asking the judge, which ruled that the Bratz dolls, marketed by MGA since 2001, are actually the property of Mattel since the creator of the dolls was employed by Mattel at the time of conception. MGA is appealing the ruling and is asking the appeals court to hold of on the ordered transfer, which MGA says would do irreparable harm, until the appeals process plays out.

No word on when a ruling is expected but it seems likely that the court will side with MGA on this one and postpone the transfer.

3: Digg Content is Now Public Domain Internationally

Finally today, Digg has changed the license it places all user-submitted content under from its generic public domain dedication to a CC0 license in a bid to make the license more applicable international.

In terms of licensing, the CC0 license is functionally the same as a public domain dedication, waiving all rights to enforce ones copyright, however, the CC0 license works better in countries without specific public domain dedication procedures or countries where such rights are inalienable.

All in all, it is a minor change for Digg, but definitely a coup for the CC0 license as Digg now becomes by far the license’s biggest user.

Suggestions

That’s it for the three count today, we’ll be back tomorrow with three more copyright links. If you have a link that you want to suggest a link for the column or have any proposals to make it better. Feel free to leave a comment or send me an email. I hope to hear from you.

Want the Full Story?

Tune in every Saturday morning for the live recording of the Copyright 2.0 Show or wait and get the edited version Monday morning right here on Plagiarism Today.

In a post on the official Digg blog, John Quinn has announced several changes to the controversial DiggBar, including two changes that are aimed at appeasing Webmasters upset with the bar appearing on their site.

First, the DiggBar will no longer show up on users that are not logged in to Digg. This means most visitors that click Digg-shortened URLs, such as those posted on Twitter, will be redirected (via a 301) to the original site and will bypass the Diggbar. This makes Digg URLs function the same as TinyURL and other URL-shortening services.

Likewise, links on the Digg homepage will not display the DIggBar for users who are not logged in.

Second, they are making it easier for Digg users that don’t want the bar to opt out. They are working on making the process more obvious. This comes in response to some who complained that the option was difficult to find.

The end result is that those who are not logged into Digg and those who are but have opted out of the DiggBar should never see it again. Only users who are actively logged into Digg and opted to view the DiggBar will see it and they will continue to do so both on Digg’s site and on shortened Digg URLs.

Digg hopes to push these changes through next week though the homepage has already stopped linking to the DiggBar for users who are not logged in. However, shortened Digg URLs still, in some cases, show the Diggbar whether the user is logged in or not.

This is actually the second round of changes to the DiggBar since it was announced. The first saw Digg switch to JavaScript based linking, so search engines would not see the DiggBar when indexing Digg’s homepage, and use Meta tags to block search engines from indexing DiggBar URLs. Though these changes were a positive step forward, they were not enough to completely quiet the criticisms about the DiggBar.

Digg hopes that this new round of changes will finally satiate the bloggers and other webmasters that have railed on it for the past two weeks.

Is It Enough?

For those that have been concerned about SEO issues, this should finally put those problems completely to rest. Though the previous round of changes should have prevented DiggBar URLs from appearing in the search results, this round will ensure that “link juice” flows correctly, including over the shortened URLs, which now will use a 301 redirect.

For those who hate framing on principle and all of its forms, these changes will be slightly less than satisfying. Though this is definitely a good step forward, the fact is the DiggBar will still be framing sites, albeit in a much more limited capacity.

Regarding the legal issues, the trademark issues have likely been lessened as there is less likelihood of confusion when the Bar is only shown to existing Digg members that understand what the bar is and does. The potential copyright issues and interference issues, however, remain though the likelihood of them being seriously raised are much less.

All in all, I don’t think this is going to put an end to all of the controversy over the DiggBar, but if Kevin Muldoon’s post on BloggingTips (a site I also write for) is any indication, it has gone a long way toward mending bridges. Muldoon even added back the Digg button after removing it due to the DiggBar.

Bottom Line

Though I don’t think this will completely end the controversy over the DiggBar, it will likely put the vast majority of it to rest. Most webmasters that were upset about the DiggBar will likely be satisfied by these changes though there will be some who take an absolutist view on frames that will not.

However, for those that don’t want even this very limited use of the DiggBar on their site, I would encourage you to add a frame breaking script to your site to ensure it doesn’t appear.

The sad and worrisome news though is that Digg was not the first and will not be the last site to use frames in this manner. Several others do right now.

The larger issue of framing is not going away any time soon. As content creators and webmasters, we need to be ready for it.

In a post on their blog this morning, Digg answered many of the concerns and accusations that have been filed over its new DiggBar service (previous coverage) in an attempt to quell some of the backlash.

In their response, Digg claims that they took several steps to ensure that the DiggBar was fair to publishers, including the following:

• JavaScript-Based Linking: The links on Digg’s page are actually links to the original source, but they are modified using JavaScript for visitors that have that option selected. Search engines can’t see JavaScript and, theoretically, should only be directed to the original content. Registered users can turn this off by visiting their Settings and editing their Viewing Preferences.
• Canonical Links and Meta Tags: In an update earlier this week, the DiggBar now identifies the source URL as canonical, indicating that it is the original source of the content, not the DiggBar URL. Furthermore, the new Digg URL pages now also include a meta “noindex” tag to ensure that the Digg page is not indexed in the major search engines.
• Working with Web Analytics Companies: Digg also said they have worked with many different Web analytics firms, including Comscore, Nielsen, Quantcast and Compete to ensure that the source URL will be credited for the traffic. They have confirmed, on all of those sites, that it should work as planned.

The reaction to this has been very postive, include articles both on Mashable and on TechCrunch that are supportive of the changes, the latter even saying, “So crisis averted… Whew, no [sic] I can go back to using the Diggbar.”

However, the comments on both posts have been less enthusiastic. Both sites have commenters that are still critical of the change and are not satiated by the fixes.

Clearly this controversy is going to be continuing for quite some time.

My Thoughts

There isn’t much doubt that this is a step in the right direction. Though I’m going to withhold judgment until I see evidence that these steps are actively helping Webmasters, especially those who had already seen some of their links in Google get replaced by Digg’s, the “noindex” alone shows a willingness to at least make some concessions to publishers.

Though, theoretically, the Digg URLs should not be making it into any search index anywhere, it would still clearly be better for publishers if those URLs didn’t exist at all or forwarded the traffic on directly.

Furthermore, this doesn’t do anything to address the legal concerns listed in the previous post on the topic. The copyright, trademark and tortuous interference issues remain as do all of the non-SEO related ethical issues, including advertising and visitor interference.

Though I’m going to sleep better tonight knowing that the DiggBar has at least done what it can to resolve the SEO issues, which were at least the most immediate of the concerns, there are still many other issues that need to be addressed.

However, I think the best comment on the subject came from Kevin at ToMuse, who reminded me that the reason framing was abandoned in the late nineties, when it first became popular, was because it caused problems with visitors and the Web at large. As more sites used frames, frames began to open up within other frames, creating a mess.

Since only a few sites use frames now, the problem isn’t there yet. But with Digg and Facebook both using the technique, it is only a matter of time before more sites take it up. As this frame monster I created with help from friends on Twitter shows, it’s already possible with a little effort (special thanks to @jfredson).

Though the immediate problems with the DiggBar seem to have been dealt with, the longer term ones remain. Let’s hope that the problem is averted as I don’t think anyone who developed sites in the mid to late nineties wants to go through the “frame wars” all over again.

Digg has long been heralded as one of the best and most ethical ways to handle content aggregation. It’s practice of very limited content copying with direct, high-profile linking, has made it something of a standards-bearer on the Web for other sites wanting to get into the business.

However, that reputation took something of a hit last week. Digg announced its new DiggBar along with its new URL shortening service. The new bar, rather than linking directly to the page being Dugg, puts the page in an iframe below a small Digg-hosted pane. This keeps the URL, the visitor and the search engines on the Digg domain while loading the Dugg page.

This has proved to be a very divisive new feature. Power Digg uers like the ability to interact with Digg while reading the article and Twitter users love the new URL shortener. However, some casual Digg users are frustrated with the new URLs (it can make sharing articles more difficult) and content creators are upset that Digg is no longer linking directly to their site.

Some have gone so far as to hint that the DiggBar may be content theft and an attempt to boost their own traffic at the expense of the people they link to.

This begs the question, is Digg doing something unethical or even illegal? The answers are not simple.

Some History

(Note: This is a very simplistic description of framing for those who are unfamiliar with how it works). The technique that Digg uses to create its DiggBar is known as an iframe or inline frame. Iframes allow developers to create the effect of a “page within a page”.

In many ways, an iframe is similar to a YouTube embed. When a site embeds a YouTube clip, they are displaying the content, which is pulled from YouTube’s server and is under their control, as an element on their page. The difference is, rather than a line of JavaScript, iframe uses an HTML tag to tell the Web browser to pull the content from another page and fill a portion of the screen with it.

The result is that, when you look at the source code of DiggBar page, you’ll see the code for the content of the DiggBar itself and what amounts to a link to the source content. However, rather than creating a clickable link, the iframe opens the content below the bar.

The technique has been around since 1996 and was heavily frowned upon when it first became popular. Initially it was used both for creating sites, such as having navigation next to or on top of the main content, and for “framing” outgoing links, such as what Digg is doing.

As a site development technique, it lost its popularity largely due to its poor performance with the search engines (search engines, especially then, only seemed to read the frame page, not the pages within it). As a method of linking, it was largely shunned as being bad form or even greedy.

However, in recent years, framing has begun to make something of a comeback. Though About.com has used iframes on many of its external links for years, StumbleUpon reintroduced many to it by using it as part of its site, to help people vote up and down links without a browser add-on. Also, several URL shortening services, such as Owl.ly, have been using iframes to add features and keep track of stats.

For the most part, the response to framing has been fairly muted. However, Digg is the by far the largest site to make such a broad use of framing (save perhaps Facebook, which adds an iframe to some outbound links) and that, combined with the fact Digg’s primary function is to link to other sites, has made it a target.

But is framing illegal? It is a good question that hasn’t been wholly answered.

The Law on Framing

The case law on framing is surprisingly thin. Though the technique has been around for over a decade and several suits/disputes have come out of it, all of the cases seem to have been settled out of court.

However, the case of Washington Post v. TotalNews may provide some clues as to the potential legal risks. The case, which was settled in 1997, saw The Washington Post sue a news startup called TotalNews because the site was using frames to link to Washington Post content rather than plain hyperlinks.

In the case, there were three primary objections that seem potentially relevant to the DiggBar:

1. Trademark Infringement: Displaying one’s logo over another person’s content could be seen as implying a relationship between the two that does not exist and that, in turn could, be considered trademark infringement. For example, if the New York Times felt that the DiggBar was causing people to believe that Digg sponsored the newspaper or that the NYT endorsed Digg, they might have grounds for a trademark suit. Furthermore, if the NYT felt that the DiggBar caused confusion as to the origin of the reporting, they might have similar grounds.
2. Copyright Infringement: Though framing doesn’t make an actual copy of the page that is being framed, one could argue that framing both violates the distribution right under copyright law and that it creates a derivative work based upon the original. Either of these would be a violation of the copyright holder’s exclusive rights, if it could be shown.
3. Tortious interference with Business Relationships: By reducing the amount of visible area on the page and running their own advertisements (should they appear), the DiggBar could be accused of interfering with existing advertising partnerships on various sites.

None of these items are a perfect fit and all require a bit of stretching. However, it is easy to see how, in each case, an argument could be made and be successful. But since the TotalNews case was settled out of court, with TotalNews agreeing to stop using frames, there are no legal rulings on these issues.

The question is not just whether these approaches could work, but whether they could work in 2009, with more tech-savvy judges. It is very difficult to say and there are no clear answers.

Still, there are clearly many ways that a litigious-minded content creator could sue Digg for the DiggBar.

The Ethics of Framing

If the legalities of framing are muddled, then the ethics are divisive. Some people feel that framing is perfectly acceptable, others think of it as a form of content theft. It is often a matter of personal perspective.

Those who do object to framing typically do so on one of three grounds:

1. SEO Issues: Though there is some debate as to how framing affects search engine ranking, at least one blogger has seen lower PageRank posts get bumped from Google in favor of Digg URLs already (see comments). It is pretty clear that linking to a page with the content in a frame does less good in the search engines than just linking to it directly.
2. Advertising and Integrity: Though the DiggBar doesn’t display ads yet, it is foreseeable that it will at some point. Many sites don’t allow ads sites that link by framing are the only way that ads are displayed along side their content. Many people aren’t comfortable with other sites earning money directly off of their content, especially when they aren’t doing so themselves. Furthermore, other sites don’t like their pages to be altered in any way, including via framing.
3. Visitor Interference: Framing not only reduces the screen real estate that the visitor has to read the content, but it also impedes their ability to copy the source link. Though Digg is also billing itself as a URL shortening service, there are still many cases where one wants to copy the full, original URL (IE: Three Count columns). Framing makes that more difficult to do and encourages users to pass around links to other domains.

(Note: Do you have a particular objection I missed? Leave it in the comments and I may add it in.)

The end result is that even Webmasters who are not outraged by framing still, usually, prefer direct links for most things. The question is whether or no Webmasters will be outraged enough by the DiggBar to try and force them to change.

Breaking the DiggBar

Since framing is over a decade old, so are the techniques for breaking them. If you don’t want the DiggBar, or any such frame, to display over your site, all you have to do is add a few lines of JavaScript code to “break out” of the frame.

The technique does work on the DiggBar, as it will any iframe-based system. However, it will not fix the SEO issues mentioned above since search engines will still see the frame page and can not process the JavaScript on your page to know that you do not want the frame there.

In short, this technique only helps ensure that visitors do not see your site with the DiggBar, search engines and other spiders will still see Digg’s content with a reference to yours.

Personal Thoughts

I’ve always been of two minds when it comes to framing. Sometimes, as with StumbleUpon, there is a legitimate use to the framing and little harm done by it (StumbleUpon links don’t pass along any Google benefit that I know of and the framing is necessary for the site to work). Other times, as with About.com, it is a play to maintain advertising and a presence as the visitors leaves the site, all at the expense of the target URL.

The DiggBar falls somewhere between. It isn’t necessary for Digg to work, Digg got along just fine without it, and the features it creates are not that important. Digg could have just as easily made a URL shortening service without the DiggBar (perhaps linking to Digg’s permalink). However, the bar does make Digg easier to use and provides features power users will find compelling, including comments and related links.

However, do these features justify the treatment webmasters are getting at the hands of Digg? I don’t believe so. Digg is expanding its presence into the sites it links to and those sites, in turn, get a short URL and the traffic Digg provides (which can be quite a lot for items on home page items). Whether or not that is a good trade overall will depend on the webmaster, but it clearly isn’t as good of a trade as everyone got before.

I’m not so much outraged by Digg as I am disappointed. Digg has always been the poster child for how to run a business off of other people’s content in a way that was fair to content creators. They built a great community and supported the Webmasters they link to. The DiggBar tilts that relationship more in favor of Digg and without any real consultation with bloggers.

I’m not ready to liken Digg to RSS scrapers and spam bloggers, but they certainly have made a misstep here that hurts webmasters. My hope is that they will back away from this or find a way to reintroduce the features without the drawbacks to the external links, but they seem pretty set on it.

Digg may not be evil, but they are certainly more evil then they were two weeks ago.

Bottom Line

Framing isn’t going anywhere and the flagging economy, especially the advertising market, is only going to make things worse. As sites work to squeeze every advertising dollar they can out of their sites, more and more will turn to this technique to make a few bucks.

However, the legal issues of framing are far from settled and the ethical ones are about as divisive as you can get. Any site that uses this tactic does so at their own risk and it is only a matter of time before someone challenges the techniques both in and out of the courts.

If I were Digg, I would be seriously considering whether the risks associated with this move outweigh the benefits, especially over the long term.

In the meantime, if you don’t like the idea of Digg framing your site, using the frame breaking script will prevent it. I am not going to install it here (as I said, there are other sites with a legitimate use for framing) but it is there for those who need it.

I’m going to have to rethink my relationship with Digg. Having been the subject of two front page stories over the years, I know well how much traffic it can bring. But with the new DiggBar, I have to analyze both what good that traffic will do and also what the long term benefits of being on Digg are.

However, having DMCA notices a matter of public record does create a problem that I had not previously considered. As my good friend and co-host of the Copyright 2.0 Show Patrick O’Keefe found out, it can actually hinder the takedown process.

Because, when the goal is to remove a link to a potentially infringing work, making that link public can only cause more problems down the road.

An Example

In early December, O’Keefe noticed that a copy of his book was being made available for illegal download and was promoted on at least one likely spam blog. The spammer, as part of his promotion effort had also submitted the article to Digg, which not only propelled it toward the top of Google’s results for the book, but risked it reaching the front page.

Patrick took action and filed a DMCA notice with Digg. Since Digg is an “information location tool” as described in the DMCA, Digg was obligated to remove the link under the law (or be held potentially liable for the infringement) and did so.

However, Digg, as is their right, submitted the notice to Chilling Effects and then linked tot he notice when it was posted. The only problem was that the posting on Chilling Effects came with the complete URL for the infringing site. Though it was not a “live” link, one could easily copy and paste it into their browser.

The end result of this was that instead of Digg linking to a page with the book for download, Digg now links to a page on Chilling Effects that has the full URL to the download page. Clearly, this doesn’t achieve the goal of the takedown nor does it do much to discourage spam from appearing on Digg. After all, the spammer is getting traffic from the site, just indirectly.

It’s clear that the system has broken down here, fortunately though, it should be pretty simple to fix.

Simple Solutions

Given Digg’s history with the DMCA, it is understandable that they would be uneasy about responding to notices and want to do everything they can to protect themselves, including using Chilling Effects. As I’ve said earlier, I am very fond of what Chilling Effects is trying to do and wish the site were updated more often.

However, it defeats the purpose of filing a DMCA notice from the search engines if the infringing URL is placed in full in the notice, making it so that the content can be trivially found. I want to encourage Chilling Effects to post notices, hosts to use the site and for them to link to the notices, but not if doing so negates the purpose of filing a takedown.

The solution is fairly simple, since Chilling Effects already redacts large portions of the notices is posts, namely the private information of the filer, it makes sense to also remove all or part of the infringing URL. Though it is an important part of the notice, leaving it in negates the purpose of a section 512(d) takedown (information location tools) by simply redirecting the user to the allegedly infringing site.

This is true with all DMCA notices to social news and search engine sites, including Google.

As long as Chilling Effects posts the full URL, it will be very difficult for copyright holders to correctly apply the DMCA and it will likely hinder many hosts, search engines and news sites from submitting the notices they receive. After all, what is the point of them removing a link and submitting a notice when it will just result in the link being reposted, albeit in a roundabout way.

Simply put, there has to be some middle ground that can display enough information in the URL, without hindering the DMCA process.

Conclusions

I’ve written before about the need for greater DMCA transparency and I think that Chilling Effects can be a large part of the solution. Howver, being part of the solution means observing and reporting on the DMCA process, not hindering it, even by accident.

I certainly don’t feel that Chilling Effects is malicious in this nor do I think they did any serious harm in this case. In the end, O’Keefe was able to get the PDF file removed from the file server it was stored on through another DMCA process, thus ensuring that it couldn’t be downloaded even if the spam blog remained up, which it has.

Though this story has a happy ending, it does highlight a strange problem with the DMCA process when it is move into the public light.

Note: I contacted Wendy Seltzer, the project leader at Chilling Effects on 12/23/08 but have not heard back from her. I will update this post if I receive a response.

The site, according to Klug, was getting about 2,000 visits per day when it was forgotten but is almost certainly doing much better now as it has taken off, attracting countless Twitter Tweets and other social news attention. Librarians and teachers are especially captivated by this site.

But is “The Plagiarism Checker” worth using? Is it as powerful of a tool as some, although not the site itself, have made it to be? The sad answer is no, but it could, with a few simple tweaks, become a much more useful service for teachers and bloggers alike.

How it Works

The basic premise of the minimalist site can be summed up by its instructions:

Cut & paste your students paper or homework assignment into the box below, and click the “check” button. This free plagiarism detector will find plagiarized text in homework and other essays/reports.

In short, you take an essay, article or other lengthy prose work, paste it into a textbox and hit “check”. From there, the site extracts several strings of text, runs them through Google and compiles the result, determining whether plagiarism is probable.

In that regard, the idea is actually very similar to Copyscape, which also uses Google via their API, to process results. However, where Copyscape’s keeps the “magic” hidden from the user, the “Dustball” plagiarism checker includes links to the Google results, encouraging users to click through and research the case for themselves.

That alone is a big part of the problem Webmasters, and many teachers, will have with the service. Where Copyscape, as well as academic tools such as TurnItIn, provide very simple and colorful results, The Plagiarism Checker is a very bare-bones approach, requiring the user to perform a large amount of research on their own.

Still, a bit of research will be welcomed if the service produces great results, unfortunately, it seems that the service performs only lukewarm, at best.

My Tests

To test the service, I decided to run it through a similar battery of tests that I had run Copyscape through and then watched as they improved upon the initial results.

The first test was to run an old poem of mine through the system, one that allegedly has over 300 matches in Google. However, that test was thwarted as The Plagiarism Checker refused to even look at the work, saying that it could not function with such short text strings.

I then shifted gears and started using prose works, the first being one that had 36 matches in Google at the time I did the search. The result was stunning.

Despite the fact Google had reported three dozen matches on test snippets from the work itself, the “Dustball” checker was unable to find anything. To make matters worse, using some of the sample quotes from the test, I was able to locate other copies of the work, such as with the first quote.

Clearly, The Plagiarism Checker was missing results that Google was finding, meaning it was discarding them for whatever reason.

A similar test for another prose work only returned one sentence that was matched against anything and the results for it were all false positives. This work, in Google, has six results.

The only search using the service that seemed to work remotely well was when I ran the Declaration of Independence through it. Every search term, in this test, came back positive.

It appears that text that is not widely distributed around the Web may or may not show up as plagiarized in this work, something that has me very worried as many are starting to rely on this plagiarism checker as their main tool for detecting both copyright infringement and the plagiarism of students.

The Sad Truth

Simply put, any and all of these search results should have come back as being plagiarized. Even if there were no other matches of the content, these works existed on my site and are available through Google there. There is no reason that any of these works should have come back as anything short of 100% plagiarized since this site can not know I was the one submitting them.

For teachers, this is not good news. Is a student plagiarizes material from obscure sources, they are likely to escape detection. Likewise, Webmasters and those that might want to use this tool to track their own content, will likely be disappointed that it doesn’t seem to pick up when the infringement is only a few dozen sites.

This can most likely be fixed through tweaks in the algorithm, but as it sits right now, it doesn’t appear that it has much to offer teachers or Webmasters, especially when Copyscape is relatively effective and cheap to use.

Simply put, at this moment, Copyscape is easier, more effective and faster than The Plagiarism Checker and, at only five cents a search, is affordable too.

However, the best technique still appears to be taking the time to select good phrases from a work and manually searching for those. It returns the most results and seems to work well nearly all of the time.

The Big Picture

My issue with The Plagiarism Checker has less to do with the service itself and more to do with how others have been promoting it. The site itself is actually fairly humble about what it can do, but bloggers and Twitter users have been advertising it as if it were a silver bullet to detect plagiarism. Clearly, that is not the case.

With a few tweaks and fixes to the algorithm, I don’t doubt that this service, much like Copyscape, could become a very powerful tool. However, even if the results were on par with Copyscape, the latter remains faster and easier to use, meaning that there will not be much reason to use the “Dustball” checker.

To make matters worse, most teachers and professors have access to services such as TurnItIn that are far more accurate and covers a much larger breadth of sources than “The Plagiarism Checker”. Considering the ease of us and added features, there is not much that can be gleaned from a Google-only search, that can’t be gleaned from the more automated service (Though Copyscape did top Turnitin in a recent plagiarism detection study).

In short, I don’t see much usefulness for this tool, even if its accuracy improves, and I and more than a little confused as to why so many seem to have promoted it so heavily.

Conclusions

More than anything, this is a case against the reliance on any one plagiarism checking service. Even the best services will let results slip through the cracks. Furthermore, just because a service is popular does not mean that it should be trusted above all.

However, I find it very difficult to fault The Plagiarism Checker for this confusion and these problems. It is clear that the service was as much an experiment as anything, it is promoted humbly and was actually abandoned for approximately six years. It was others, perhaps desperate for some way to more effectively detect plagiarism, that gave it an unjustified reputation.

If anything, this case shows the need and the potential market for such services and illustrates why some companies have made millions in this field. People are eager for a solution and are excited by any promise of one.

Sadly though, this site is not the one people are looking for.