@cinemacapman As I understand it, a new torrent is only a duplicate if there's an existing torrent "with at least one seeder." Duplicating a dead torrent with an identical new one is not a duplicate, if that terminology makes sense.
Uploading a new sort-of-duplicate-of-something's-that-dead has the advantage that it will show up at the top of the search listing, whereas resurrecting a dead torrent by re-seeding it will not. This will expose (!) the new torrent to users who have joined the site since the dead one was posted; such users might not have found the dead torrent otherwise.
I will occasionally upload a new torrent with older material if I think it's of significant value that might be overlooked by other people. I don't do this often, and again, only for something that I think would be of great value to people.
(Sometimes I also take older material and convert it from less popular formats like .flv or .rm, and/or join multiple smaller files into a single file. The torrents resulting from these things would not be considered duplicates even if the source torrents were still live.)
So, I don't think it's necessary to report a new torrent that replaces a dead one, even if the dead one is still in the system. A user could conceivably abuse this process* by uploading a bunch of new torrents, but if other users choose to download the material, perhaps it's a benefit rather than abuse.
- I tried hard to think of some quip connecting torrent abuse to self-abuse, but I couldn't. I need more coffee.