I'm confused. Please explain this to me.

What I know:
If you put duplicate content on your site, your site can become a SE outcast.

What I see:
People submitting a single article to multiple article websites.

What I don't understand:
Doesn't this mean that these article websites host duplicate content?
How is that they avoid getting penalized?
On the contrary some of them have high PRs!

Please explain this to me!

Well, I am running article directories and I also want to know this...

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The World is Not Enough!

I was under the impression that duplicate content was penalised when it appeared on the same domain.

At least, that's what Google's explanation is...

Many authority sites (BBC, NY times, Reuters etc.) syndicate their content around the globe. If those articles were penalised, Google would be penalising the true authorities.

N

No, it's also across domains :

hxxp://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2006/12/deftly-dealing-with-duplicate-content.html

maybe they already program in their search engine algorithm not to penalized any site with have "article directories" or something like that keyword in their meta tags.. if they have duplicate content..

You're correct. The web would be a hell of a lot smaller if they penalized every site which had information that was posted somewhere else. There's a huge difference between penalizing a site for duplicate content and simply not rewarding them for it.

My understanding of the Dup Content Penalty is that only applies within a site.

They are trying to stop websites have multiple pages with the same content on it..

I have multiple sites, all posting complete 100% duplicate content on then that are going "great guns" so I guess I'm not getting stung by the "dup con" penalty..

Just my 2 cents worth..