joeyl wrote:
The duplicate content penalty you describe sounds like a filter to me Simmo.
Yup. Exactly 
I think “penalty” in SEO terms is a largely misunderstood term.
In reality, Google etc aren’t going to “penalise” a site for “off-page” factors outside of your control. It would be bad practice for them to assume that the same person was always responsible for the same content on two sites. besides which, they have ICANN accreditation now so they can check whois anyway.