Sure is, i'd like to visit the person who came up with this.. With a nickel in one hand and a bat in the other. There's a number of these myths, but this sure is a popular one. The amount of people who believe if they have a duplicate block of text their whole site will be banned from the engines is astonishing.
What if you submit your article to an article directory or something? It is a duplicate article. Would you be penalized for submitting your articles to article directories? Or should your change the content when you submit the content?
Read above, there's no duplicate content "penalty". If you submit your article to directories and put it on your site Google will choose one document which it deems most authorative. If you submit to EzineArticles and your site is quite new, expect them to show up in the SERP's.
Totally agree with this. But why would anyone want to write a quality article on their site, and then submit the exact same one to an article site
Beats me as well, i'm doing myself out of business saying this because i own a couple of article directories.. But if you write a quality article, publish it to your site and keep it unique.