When I first started out doing SEO I had no clue about the value of having good content. I read it everywhere and heard everybody saying, get quality content and the links will come. And this is absolutely true. It almost seems as if the number of links is almost directly related to the quality of the content.
Having lots of copied or low quality content really doesn't have much value when you're trying to rank of higher traffic terms. I would say it is better for the web as a whole and for long terms success to focus your efforts on quality.