Do you think it's legit to be rewarded for something that didn't take effort and was simply copy-pasted?
It's not black and white, there is "some" work associated to copy pasting content, part of the work is selecting the content itself. If you look at my history you can see that posts which are "legit" original content get rewarded way more. For example I would rank and reward in order ...
- Content I enjoyed
- Content I think the community would enjoy
- Good content
- Good content I enjoyed
- Good content I think the community would enjoy
...##. Good, original, exclusive, content that I enjoyed, that I think the community would enjoy. Ect
Add to that reward my perceived amount of work and skill required to bring that content to Steem. And you'll find that I was pretty generous to give 20-30$ per posts to @o0pepper0o porn pics (before all that drama) and trans-genders posting poor quality (and IMO poor taste) content but that is "original".