masteryoda, do or do not there is no try! DO what you feel you need to. As long as you are giving proper credit to the creator of the work and citing your sources that is absolutely not plagiarism. ZERO, it is totally legit! DO NOT fear fair use. It is extremely complex. It is very important that Steemit.com, is allowed to be a source information and to be an aggregated news source. This is an enormous source of traffic and every social media site depends on it deeply. I know your intention was to share cool stuff, to spread the word. That is called the NEWS. A completely legit form of fair use. As long as you are not just using the images to make your post look cool, as long as your post is to pass along a bit of news you should be good to go.
"the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phone records or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright.-socialmediaexaminer.com"
Reproducing digital images is allowed, make sure to use a lower resolution image than the original work. This helps protect the curator from being threatened with copying the work. Again always site the source, provide a link, and credit the creator. It will also help the case for any news article to add some of your own critisism and commentary along with the transmitted material.
All the news channels and other social media sites make buko $$ from passing along news, so I suspect the Steem we receive is not really the problem.
Obviously I am not the even close to the final voice on this. That said, I do support you and I support others as people work to figure out how to safely present sharing cool stuff on Steemit.com. I say safely beacause due to plagerized work and improperly credited shared items, Steemit.com could face serious legal problems and the site could even be taken down. Which would SUCK.
-Peace
some easy links for fair use information
http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/copyright-fair-use-and-how-it-works-for-online-images/
https://www.rivaliq.com/blog/guide-copyright-fair-use-laws-online-images/
http://guides.library.ucla.edu/citing/fairuse
also a link to a post I made a week or so ago about a question I had regarding fair use
https://steemit.com/steemit-issues/@darkb4dawn/copyrighted-material-and-fair-use-on-steemit
I agree with this wholeheartedly. Nice touch @darkb4dawn to include links explaining the boundaries. The fact is, the online world can be pretty cruel sometimes. The anonymity protects our privacy, but also provides us the power to engage in bullying without consequences. It can't be helped. Engaging them would be totally up to you.
I get where you're coming from @masteryoda. You like photography and you like to share it with everyone. That's all well and good, especially if you abide by fair use. There would be no harm done, and you even make money on the side. But, as a poster of original content, I see where they're coming from as well. It's hard to see that re-posts earn more than your carefully thought-out original work. That's just the way it is currently. Until the creators of Steemit enable creators to show off their original content for an amount of time so that many people would take notice, posters would just have to market their work more heavily. However, bullying is not the way, and there are better avenues to convey their stand.
For now, you just need to solidify your choice regarding the matter. Stick with Steemit, earn some money on the side and face the criticism, or just quit and call this a learning experience. Just get along can't we all?