You are absolutely right on this. The discouragement to honest authors is another bad result of plagiarism.

Personally, I don't see Steemit as a way to make a living in the future. I enjoy writing about certain topics and I enjoy taking pictures. So far, I've experienced Steemit as a great community, where I get some feedback every now and then, and I get inspired by very talented bloggers. Also, there is a big overlap of my interests and popular topics on Steemit.

I will not be discouraged to keep on posting things I find interesting, but I would find it very annoying, if Steemit eventually turned into a copy cat community with a lower percentage of innovative and original posts.

The legal issues, however, would be an ultimate problem, as I see no way, how a portal like Steemit could ignore a court's order to remove content that violates copyrights.