dangerman - 1:06 pm on Nov 15, 2006 (gmt 0)

Exactly

how come one week after about 800 pages off my site were copied, only my ads were replaced with their ads, mys site got hit with a -30 penalty?

I filed a DMCA complaint, though before this was acted on I got the US host to dump them.

However it seemed to 'trip' the penalty wire. 7 months later, and after having completely sleaned up and trimmed my site, the penalty is still in place. No word of course from Google.

My own view is that in isolation, the act of copying perhaps will not do damage, but if it happens with a site that has already committed one or more webmaster infractions ( from Google's point of view ) it may bring down the pack of cards.