chrisnrae - 2:26 pm on Sep 14, 2004 (gmt 0)

"another very popular website word for word"

Then chances are, they had a higher PR, a lot more backlinks and had been around longer, so yea, you're prob the one being penalized.

See: [webmasterworld.com...] - it may offer you some more insight.

I would also explain very clearly to the site owner what copyright and the DMCA are and how copying content could cause you to lose your hosting and/or more.

Get the new content up and then you'll simply have to wait. Google should update the page see the content is different, but there are no guarantees on the length of time it will take them or that they will 100% do it at all. IME anyway. Good luck.