Michael Martinez of SEO Theory tipped me off to Google updating their duplicate content webmaster guidelines page.

The update was pretty minor, they made some stylist changes but also changes the last paragraph.

New Version:

Old Version:

Here, Google is saying that they rarely ever have an issue with displaying your content below a site stealing your content in the search results. Whereas before, they stated if it happens, here is what to do. Here they are now saying that it is very rare for it to happen.

The wording alone isn’t major but when you see that it was changed, it does send a message.

Forum discussion at Search Engine Roundtable Forums.