Robert_Charlton - 9:59 pm on Mar 19, 2008 (gmt 0)

Now with older sites, in theory, being scraped more often there seems to be a penalty assessed on the same phrases being used across multiple sites. It’s somewhat perplexing.

I've expressed this as a theory, and it is a theory. I've also heard Matt Cutts say with a fair amount of confidence that this doesn't happen. I'm still in the undecided column. IMO, it gets harder and harder to tell who originated certain chunks of text. We don't know, of course, how much text-chunk-originality factors into the algo. ;)