301 redirect or PBN site?

Ok, so let me explain this in the most simple way..

I had a website in 2013 and it ranked very very well, was making me about $2500 a month from ads.
Let's call this domain, Domain A.

In 2015, the website got removed from google's index for DMCA complaint.

Back in 2015, I could just buy a new domain, 301 redirect the old site to the new domain, and I would keep my rankings. Doing this, I managed to build another website and have some good authority, rankings, etc. Let's call this Domain B

This worked until december of 2016, when Domain B also got removed for DMCA complaint.

I tried to 301 redirect Domain B to a new domain, let's call this one Domain C.

To my surprise, 301 redirects doesn't work like that anymore, and Domain C was ranking horribly. For months I built backlinks to Domain C but still to no avail, I tried a new method which my competitors were using.

I took Domain B and created a subdomain called www1, and 301 redirected everything to that website. With some luck, it started to rank fairly well, not perfect by any means but on some days I would get very good traffic but it often gets removed for DMCA and I need to start over with a new subdomain and 301 redirects.

The question I have for this is, would it be more beneficial to turn Domain A and Domain C into PBN sites and backlink from them? Domain A is aged 4 years, I would need to use a subdomain like news.mysite.com or something then 301 redirect the mysite.com to the subdomain, and for Domain C it hasn't been DMCA'ed yet so I could use the full URL.

The question I'm asking is, will I get more benefit from 301 redirecting these sites, or making them real sites and backlinking to my site with them?

PBN. Always. Period.

you have nothing to lose as those thing don't affect a lot of people you have to try

have you try to do a 301 without notify that to search console. (without Change of address tool)

I also place PBN's over 301's any day of the week.

PBN all day. The last redirect I did was worthless.

If the sites are truly penalized, then you don't want to use them to 301 or as PBNs - once they are penalized, they are dead and can pass the penalty along via 301 or outbound links. Best to start fresh.

Just turn them to PBN. That's the better option than 301.

My question is, how did you get all those DMCA complaints ? What happened?

PBN site would be better