Sites that frame your site and add banner ads

Copyright infringement?

[Marshall]

I know sites frames pages and put banner ads up, usually at the top. Earlier, I found one of my ecommerce sites framed with such a banner ad and frankly, got a little angry. Aside from immediately adding a break out of frames script (something I normally put it, but this time forgot, my bad), I did a whois on the site and everything about it is in China. I know, good luck with that. Anyway, my questions are:

a) Ethics aside, what gives them the right to frame a (my or yours) page and how can sites get away with doing that?

b) Is it "technically" a copyright violation given that fact a visitor can still navigate the site, but have the banner ad at the top?

c) What recourse to the problem is there?

I guess there is sort of a fourth question/comment that legal action could be taken since they are profiting from framing your site by having banner ads at the top, but as I said, everything about this particular site is in China and the Chinese government is not well know for enforcing copyright violations.

Regardless of answers to these question, I want to remind everyone that this goes on and it doesn't hurt to put in a break out of frames script as a matter of practice. You might think you are getting an extra referrer, but remember that you have no control over the ads being shown and may get complaints from or lose visitors because of them.

Marshall

[tangor]

a) Ethics aside, what gives them the right to frame a (my or yours) page and how can sites get away with doing that?

It's all about the ethics first. No one has the right to piggy back off another's labor. They can't get away with it with DMCA (whoops! Try making that work in China)

b) Is it "technically" a copyright violation given that fact a visitor can still navigate the site, but have the banner ad at the top?

Yup, but not quite so much... given that your site works, but has been taken hostage by another site for adverts. (Bring out the big guns... copyright claim/DMCA, even in China... just takes longer and more elbow grease and and and...)

Regardless of answers to these question, I want to remind everyone that this goes on and it doesn't hurt to put in a break out of frames script as a matter of practice. You might think you are

Yes, do that, just don't be surprised that JS diabled/NoScript browsers can't see it.

One of those hurt things, where copyright should be honored and is not... that anger felt is one reason why SOPA, PIPA, ACTA et al is getting so much traction in govs these days. These are observations of what is now and how it sometimes fails, and that only the strong will fight to retain their IP (intellectual property) rights. There are discouraging aspects (kill baddies in USA, UK, CA, AU and can't get any traction in CN, RU, RO, IN, etc... But if you treasure your work you'll keep after it and do not depend on a single bit of JS to "protect" your work. After all, they've already scraped it and can put of the page on their servers. As long as they can frame your site for the bandwidth presentation they won't go down that other path.

Web site development:

Idea! (yours)
Two days (or more) to write/format/post (yours)
5 seconds to rip/frame into autogen slop site in another country

Note: I did not append "priceless"

[Marshall]

Yes, do that, just don't be surprised that JS diabled/NoScript browsers can't see it.

Not perfect solution, but better than nothing.

Marshall

[toplisek]

I'm not sure but there are websites that gather content and show at their website. This is seen inside search results. Does anybody has feedback how is possible to be seen inside SERP even you do not post Query inside input field?

Example URL: [dawhois.com...]

[enigma1]

Sent out a x-frame-options header like:
X-Frame-Options: SAMEORIGIN
it's independent of js

[StoutFiles]

c) What recourse to the problem is there?

If they're out of the country, just break out of the frame and let it go. It's not worth the time to punish them, they'll just come back with a new site. You might even anger them to the point where they spend all their time trying to get back at you.

[toplisek]

x-frame-options header like:
X-Frame-Options: SAMEORIGIN

Is this prohibited like dawhois.com by Google or other search engines like Yahoo, IE?

[Leosghost]

FI [webmasterworld.com...] :)

[mack]

You also need to consider how the user would arrive at your site in its framed state. Are they leaving another website and the site they are leaving them frames your site with the option to come back? Its certainly ethically wrong, but I see very small reasons why it could in very rare circumstances be a good thing for the end user.

If we think in terms of Google cached pages. Google use the top section to provide details of the page etc etc. Thats one example where it may be useful.

If the site in question is not in any way doing you favors in terms of traffic, it might be worth looking into blocking the referring url?

Mack.

[zeus]

google image is worse then that and trust me about China we will see much more the coming years.

[Marshall]

Leosghost, thanks for the FI.

In that thread is the following option:

How to send out the header using PHP:
<?php
header("X-Frame-Options: SAMEORIGIN");
?>

The site I am referring to uses .asp and is on a shared server. So with the above, I did an experiment framing a page from one of my sites (Site A) in a page of another site (Site B). I added the following to the page from Site A:

<%
Response.AddHeader "X-Frame-Options", "SAMEORIGIN"
%>

The results were:
Chrome 17.0.963.56 m, FireFox 4.0.1 and Safari 5.2.1 - The framed page (Site A) was blank.
IE 8 - The framed page (Site A) displayed the following:
"This content cannot be displayed in a frame
To help protect the security of information you enter into this website, the publisher of this content does not allow it to be displayed in a frame.
What you can try:
Open this content in a new window"

And to make sure the frame was loading, I removed the Response.AddHeader in the page from Site A displayed in the <iframe>. So I guess the test was a success. For anyone using .asp, you are welcome to try it.

Another option might be to add target="_top" to all your internal links, but that could be a pain.

Of course, there is always the various JavaScript options:

if (top != self) {
top.location = self.location;
}

if (window != top) {
top.location.href = location.href
}

if (top.window != window) {
top.location.href = window.location.href
}

if (parent.frames.length > 0) {
parent.location.href = location.href;
}

if (top.location != location) {
top.location.href = document.location.href
}

if (parent.frames.length >= 1) {
window.top.location.href = "YOUR_URL"
}

And StoutFiles, I am not going to waste my time chasing them down.

Marshall

[JAB Creations]

Successfully escaping another domain's frames...

- John

window.onload = function()
{
 try {var a = top.window.location.href;}
 catch (err)
 {
 top.window.location = window.location;},'2000');
 }
}

[thirteen]

I know sites frames pages and put banner ads up, usually at the top. Earlier, I found one of my ecommerce sites framed with such a banner... I did a whois on the site and everything about it is in China.

Which Ad Network is serving up the banner? There are some recourse action depending on the Ad Network.

[moTi]

imo, framing other people's pages = displaying someone else's website content under a different domain name without the consent of the originator is in fact illegal. it has to be, always, regardless the actual purpose and w/o ads on the frame. the offender profits either way, be it directly through ad placements or as an additional "service".

why apparently no one is willing to take even the local copycats to court (especially noticed some "people search engines" high in the serps earning their ad money with this practice) is completely beyond me. and let's make no mistake, above all of course: google, framing in their search cache. this should also be regarded illegal, as i really haven't given them my permission. you can only opt out (robots noarchive) - now how should i "opt out" of every single web service who tries to frame my content?

so there still seems to be a lack of juridical decisions. along with automatic scraping really one of the biggest annoyances in terms of internet copyright.

btw, also using a framebuster javascript of course.

[blend27]

How about all links on the generated page have target="_blank" and then when the page loads remove/rewrite these attributes by using JS/JQuery(whatever)?

$('a').each(function(){

// $(this) could also be wrapped in the "if" when not external link

$(this).attr('target','_self');

});

Sort of a JavaScript white-listing option. No JS = everything opens in a new window/tab.

I have several sites that I "exchanged" links with almost a decade ago that use frames on their "best sites out there" pages that generate bunch of traffic. Trying to get a Webmaster(s) to rewrite their code was sort of "_blank" back then. so..

[Marshall]

I forgot to mention how I found this.

Like any good webmaster, I was checking SERPs for keyword results. On the third page of Google was a site and the text below read:
"Visit MyDomain.com on TheirDomain.com"

When I clicked on the link, it took me to their landing page with a header and a link to my site right below along with relevant keywords. Below that were links to "related" sites, then some ads, a footer, etc. It was not until you clicked on the link to my site that it framed (or clickjacked) my site.

Just an FYI.

Marshall

[incrediBILL]

No one has the right to piggy back off another's labor.

Really?

Why let Google and Bing do it and they earn BILLIONS doing it but you would deny this site their little coin?

At first the search engines promised traffic, then the went into direct competition, now they're booting us down to the bottom of their abyss, just took them longer to be so blatant about it.

Can't have it both ways, either everyone can steal or nobody should.

[dailypress]

I had a popular news website/media do such a thing for one of my websites. It didnt bother me, cause I was getting free exposure.

[tangor]

Why let Google and Bing do it and they earn BILLIONS doing it but you would deny this site their little coin?

Google and Bing send traffic. That's the game youse and meese play every day. If other sites do not, then they are "evil" and should be dealt with accordingly.

We're stuck with the pony, the river, and the destination desired... it's that changing ponies in midstream that's the problem.

[zeus]

google image is not sending that much traffic anymore, be cause they have the full image right there, hotlinked from real site, if you try the solution mentioned here then they just block your site with a redirect notice, so they are even worse.

[Tiggerito]

While in Google Analytics I discovered a way to detect if your website is being framed.

If you add Hostname as a secondary dimension for your pages it will list the domain of the top most frame. i.e. it will be your website unless you got framed.

In my case I saw Google translation pages, social bookmarking systems and url shorners.