onepointone - 7:39 am on Nov 16, 2012 (gmt 0)

more to do with the penalty knocking you down as opposed to the scrapers doing so well in the SERP's.

Agree with that, G's multiple penalties make all other considerations irrelevant.

I've found copyscape pretty useless

ditto

What I'm doing for now is pretty much giving up publishing on my own domains and putting my content on one of the current google "darlings". And it seems to be protected there. But it's obviously not a long term viable solution, so moving towards finding an offline and off google method of making a living.