Articles show up high when new if you publish them on sites like ezinearticles.com. Then, as EzineArticles.com gets more and stops pushing yours, they drop, unless you create backlinks, just like for a site. If they're good, other site owners will pick them up.

If they get on a site that's got mojo, they'll rank high on that site. Which is great, if they give credit where credit is due. When you write an article, always have one link be your url.

Usually, when they copy, your links that are not urls, don't get copied. To keep that kind of link working, the people who copy would have to take extra steps (like re-hyperlinking), which most do not.

If you have a link that's a url and that's not showing on that blog, contact the blog owners, tells them they're stealing your content and stop, put your links and author info back. In nicer language than that. If they do not, you can contact the ezine publisher and point out to them that their content was stolen and by who. They have incentives to stop that too.

If the site owners don't do the right thing, contact their host and tell them that a site their hosting is breaking the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and how. (To find that info go to www.whois.com or www.internic.net/whois.html).

If you have the time and energy and it's an American comapny, contact the Cyber Division or the Financial Fraud Unit of the FBI you can contact Google at gmail-abuse@google.com, or spamreport@google.com, Google's spam reporting division or file a complaint with http://www.ic3.gov/default.aspx (one of FBI's sites).