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Who are they to say which on-line content is really the original when taking the off-line content into consideration as well.
My guess is that Google thinks Pagerank will take care of original content in 80% of the cases. (older content will probably receive more inbound links, certainly if it looks like it came from the original author).
There are many threads on this subject, but nothing conclusive in my opinion.
Check out the site search function on duplicate content.
There is only so much Google can do, therefore letting factors such as Pagerank etc will help.
I have a number of sites (very low PR) who are copying our content and moving from server > server.
Shak