Rant! You call that ranting? This is a proper rant:
I first encountered a copper head gasket in a '31 Rolls I was rebuilding. I demanded that the owner buy a new one and he refused. He insisted that it was fine. I seem to recall that at the time I taking a metallurgy class and doing creep tests on copper. If memory serves it has large grains which will compress one time and then get brittle. I was convinced his gasket was shot from being compressed once much like the compressible metal O-ring seals on oil plugs. Then again, as I say, I was in college at the time and my brain suffered considerable abuse at that time as it has since that time so I may be all wet on this.
I do remember clearly that the cheap SOB who owned the Rolls only paid me $500 for the job which I did at his house over the course of a year (at least 200 hours) with him watching every move. This is probably my fault because we didn't set a fee up front - I figured I'd ask him to pay what he though the work was worth when I completed the job. I also remember I did the job because he left plain water in the system and let it freeze and break his block. It was a great car but the owner was a real Dilbert!
So, I would not reuse a copper head gasket any more than I would reuse a crush ring (oops, I've done that frequently). Actually I think that since copper is relatively soft it should be okay but I would worry about it not conforming well to small irregularities in the block and head. I have had some milled heads come back which, in my opinion, were pretty rough.