ownerrim - 3:50 am on May 18, 2005 (gmt 0)

"often creating 5 - 10 copies of the same website on the Internet at once (which, as you can imagine, causes all sorts of dup content penalties"

Have any of your urls noticeably suffered in their rankings due to duplicate content issues, or have you managed to avoid that because you have more pagerank on your urls?

Also, I wonder how you first noticed this was happening. And, for that matter, I wonder how they began to notice your urls? Was it because the sites were prominent for certain keyword rankings?

I have a new site I am working on that will be loaded with hundreds of pages of indepth, original content. Because the subject matter has broad appeal, I am somewhat hesitant to go about optimizing so it will surface in the serps because of this very issue. I've thought about taking EFV's advice and getting a copyright. I've also considered using the *opyscape service.

The thought of someone stealing the content makes me ill. The thought of someone stealing it and causing ME duplicate content problems makes me want to hurl.