You are spot on by calling this the grand experiment. The problem is the we have traversed a new path in pay to post (that Jeannie not going back in the bottle) where new users migrate from twitter and facebook where 'sharing' is promoted and encouraged. The pay to post applies 'for profit' which changes the rules of the game. I believe a great bit of legal responsibility falls to Steemit for failing to offer clear guidelines to its new user. I fear at some point Steemit will take that hit which it may or may not survive. I like the whole 'fuck-em' attitude when it comes to copyright, but there are too many lawyers in the world trying to make a living too. You say
and experiment and a business model that we're all trying to make work and develop in good faith. Or at least most of us are.
I do not see Steemit acting in good faith. They are not protecting the business model for sake of gathering new users and wanting growth. How easy would it be to inform users about risks or legal implications of copyright and plagiarism and making clear the whole 'share' concept does not work here- before they are allowed to post. VERY EASY and it would protect the business model. But all (most) those new users would walk, never starting, showing little growth. For now, this is the wild wild west.
I like the Wild Wild West. There's so little of it left. But what about all those lawyers? The current litigious system in the US has, what, a year or so left? Pretty soon we'll be free to do whatever we want on Steemit and lawyers be damned.
Twitter runs ads for profit, so does Facebook. They're publicly traded.