That's very true but I think Copyscape tries to identity whole phrases and paragraphs lifted from another source. I'm not positive but that must be how it operates or else it would be impossible not to have 'plagiarized' articles.

Yes, I have heard that Copyscape has helped a lot with this issue but it does seem that some places must not have you use it if there is still so much copying of other peoples work.

I haven't use this Copyscape yet, but I am actually curious to see if someone is actually copying my stuff. Athough I guess not many people would really want to do so.

I wonder what motivates someone to steal content from another site. It seems so blatant, it is obvious that it is wrong and it is pretty certain that they will be found out, so what makes them put themselves in that position?

I think it's just the ease of doing it and not thinking about the consequences of getting caught. The hardest part (as I'm sure many of us know) about developing and maintaining a well trafficked blog/website is creating content so I guess many people think they can just take a shortcut. It is a dumb idea though.

I just had a look at the Copyscape site, it looks good. I didn't know about it until I read this thread, it seems like a very useful resource.