If I understand correctly. It is just duplicating content that is an issue.
I think my real question is, if you can get clean (google approved) links from powerful websites, how many would you need to really increase your rankings?
lets say 5 pr7-9 sites linked to your new site, is that enough to get on page 1 for that article they are linking to or whatever keywords your site tends to attract?
does that make sense?