People are going crazy with the "duplicate content" issue

People are going crazy with the "duplicate content" issue.

I have written an article on my site, waited for it to get indexed on google and than posted the same article to squidoo and articlebase.

Both sites rejected it because of dupe content.

This is stupid. I'm not CNN but lets say I were. Google would penalize thousands of sites who pick up their articles.

So right now, article dirs expect you to write 100% unqiue content for them to place their adds, link back to a great site (yours - they won't accept 2 post sites) for what? For a backlinck?

How about the time needed to write one? I could make a blog in the time needed to set everything on squidoo or hubpages.

The nerve of articlebase is even worse: they will nofollow anchor text backlinks.

And don't let me get started on the PR value, since it's almost non existent.

It's silly how all the seo articles out here, mass building links turned us into slaves of article dirs and keeping us from writing good content on our sites and earn money!

I forgot to say another downfall - it's not yours, they own everything

I am shifting my strategy and make web 2.0 properties like:
- blogger;
- posterous;
- wordpress;
- livejournal

BTW, this post was not a question, just wanted to share my thoughts!