Okay I couldn't disagree with this article more - for a reason mentioned within the article itself. "They are simply going to filter out the dupes." - yeah and if that dupe content is another website completely or even on your own site a page you didn't really want showing up for the related terms in comparison to another page you're hosed. Duplicate content is certainly a reality of today's internet, but not something that should be treated as a "oh well" thing either.

Correct, JBrash. But it's STILL not a "penalty."

Search engine penalties are different than filters.

Agreed it's not a penalty Jill but it's still bad if mishandled. It's like saying a traffic warning for speeding is not the same as an actual citation - sure it's not but you still had the bad effect of being pulled over. Same here - it's not necessarily bad in that you got penalized but it's still negative in its effect - you have incorrect pages indexed and/or a competitor's website showing up in the SERPS instead of your own. Duped content is not something penalized - that is correct - but it is something of negative effective so for the sake of doing a good professional job as an SEO it should be avoided where possible in my humble opinion.

Which is what I said in the article.