One of the things that gets me about this whole "OMG THEY IZ STEALING MAH LETTERS!!!" series of lawsuits is that it would appear that they are tracking down the offending blogs.... by the very links that sent traffic.
Google will show you who linked a particular URL. You can also check you referral logs. Had these blogs simply copy and pasted the stories without linking back to them (a faux pas of the highest caliber in the blog world), they probably would have very little luck of finding them.
So, to protect yourself, it might be a good idea to not supply an anchor link back to the source. Use TinyUrl or something instead.