I totally agree that plagiarism and copyright infringement are very serious and must be taken care of. These are things that are not only morally wrong, but actually illegal if you get right to it and cases can be brought against people even. I was aware that @steemcleaners was doing what they can about written forms. I was however, not really thinking about the photograph's as personally I was always in the habit of citing ones that I used.
This is a serious thing that we must definitely addressed. I've added this to my list of topics to bring up. :)
I'm sorry to hear that this has directly affected you also. That's a shame.
I know that other sites have ways of dealing with this issue better that steemit has though, i'm not exactly sure what they are.
I'm going to start with a couple lighter topics to get people talking then lead into some of the heavier ones like this. It may seem backwards I'm just wanting to get more voices talking before we get to the heavy stuff.
Thanks for bringing this up!
Yes Steamcleaners handles photo plagiarism too, but they don't go deeply enough. They accept whatever is given as a source, because it simply shows the person is not claiming it as their own. The problem is that it is plagiarism not to cite the ORIGINAL author!
I'm finding more and more professional photographers joining Steemit, so pretty soon there may be a unified voice with us too.