Are there reliable sources for offering free content to your affiliates?

An affiliate who had signed up with our program..asked me if I knew of any resources for free content. I know that any type of duplicate content can get a blog or site dumped into Google's dreaded supplemental index. So I posted this question for feedback on abestweb.com. and got some great responses and ideas from the members. First members strongly warned against using free content for the following reasons...

• Copyright issues - many of the repositories of "free" content are simply compilations of copyrighted material, with the attribution stripped out or replaced. Even if you can't find the same content in a Google search... you may be surprised to find out that it was copied from a site that isn't indexed because it requires registration, and/or because it charges for access to content. (And although most copyright owners will simply send you a "cease and desist" message, every year there are lawsuits filed by some copyright owner or broker against a zillion defendants.)
• Beware of using offshore "writers" in India - content that is often very thinly adapted from copyrighted materials and very poorly written.

A good suggestion I got for content ideas is to set up a google news alert..You set up alerts by keyword and they drop you an email whenever they find related articles. This can give you some ideas for articles to write.

and finally, talk to people in your industry..there may be writers who are willing to give your articles for free to get their name out. Need to check these writers out carefully.