Is Duplicate Page Penalty Gone?

Seeing duplicates ranking #1 and #2

[metrostang]

In Google's quality guidelines, "Don't create multiple pages, subdomains, or domains with substantially duplicate content."

However, recently I've seen many instances where duplicate pages with different sub domains are ranked #1 and #2 with the 2nd being an indented result. This is true for multiple searches with the same domain involved, always in the first two spots. Is anyone else seeing this? Is this something that should be reported on a spam report or should Google pick this up with their programming?

This is no fly by night site doing this. They are a ligitimate business whose site deserves to rank well, but not in the first two spots for the same content. I'm surprised they are taking the chance unless they know something I don't.