Our quality guidelines warn against running a site with thin or scraped content without adding substantial added value to the user. Recently, we’ve seen this behavior on many video sites, particularly in the adult industry, but also elsewhere. These sites display content provided by anaffiliate program—the same content that is available across hundreds or even thousands of other sites. If your site syndicates content that’s available elsewhere, a good question to ask is: “Does this site provide significant added benefits that would make a user want to visit this site in search results instead of the original source of the content?” If the answer is “No,” the site may frustrate searchers and violate our quality guidelines. As with any violation of our quality guidelines, we may take action, including removal from our index, in order to maintain the quality of our users’ search results. If you have any questions about our guidelines, you can ask them in our http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2014/01/affiliate-programs-and-added-value.html They clearly mention those that use affiliate programs.... am i reading this right? I guess if you scrape news or something of value, then your ok. So they are like saying: If you scrape porn titles, your out! If you scrape affiliate titles, your out! If you scrape duplicate titles, no content, your out! (that is if you do not provide more value to the content)
I think content scraping and syndication should be the same thing across board. Why allow it for some type of site and penalize others? As for syndication, I know Google frown at it. I once syndicated content across my domains that had adsense on them. My codes never lasted.
We know google is not equal opportunity, and here's why... 1: Google has an interest or stake, then they will get a pass.... 2: If google even thinks it will affect their interests, pass.... 3: If you are a Big Board, you will most likely get a pass.... Everyone Else = Fail! and it is not really about the content scraping...it is about millions of people pulling in the exact titles and not adding any add'l content to provide a bit more value, even spin content would likely do....
I have a few examples wherein sites that have scrapped images have an alexa ranking of less than 100k.
Content syndication runs the web, just because you participate doesn't mean you'll get slapped. The key is to build domain authority and to offer the syndicated content in a useful format, or alongside other useful content.