Preaching to the choir, my friend. Been saying this for 5 weeks. Copy and paste is bad enough when people are taking content outside of Steemit and profiting handsomely, but there are users taking successful original posts within Steemit hoping to profit. It's a drain on the time and money of those that are attempting to clean it up. We need new users to see that Steemit is NOT a place to copy and paste since that is a dead end for the platform. It can't survive if it supports copy and paste and plagiarism and so-called sharing of links. The many users that are creating content will be incentivized to create less than their best work because it simply won't be worth their time to do so.
Also, by the nature of things making big rewards - practically random at times - there is that additional pressure to not put as much time in to your post. Just post up some semi-plagiarized or derivative content and cross your fingers. I've relegated my account to strictly commenting on injustices and ferreting out abuse as I can't bring myself to post anything I'm not populating with entirely my own creations. From writing to illustrations and photographs. If I didn't make it and think of it, I'm not posting it.
I'm so glad you have principles. We need to support people with principles, because isn't that the world we should strive to live in? Reward those things that we want to see in our society and that's what we will get. Keep relying on economic incentives and people will be selfish. There is a balance that can be struck, I hope. We aren't there yet.