Profiting from other people's work is something that everyone does.
Take a truck driver, who brings retail stock from producer to retailer. The truck driver does not create the content, he just transports it. The retailer does not create the content, he just provides a convenient location for people to find and buy the content. Even the producer does not work alone - he relies on the truck driver and the retailer for his product to reach his audience.
It is wrong to imagine that the only person in the attention economy supply chain is the creator of content. Just like in the physical world, content needs to find its end user. In social media, that is what ordinary users do. Why do you think Youtubers keep asking people to like, subscribe and share their content? They want to increase their reach. Good content needs to be shared, curated, aggregated. A prohibition on profiting from this is a disservice. This is the very reason we have curation rewards on Hive.
Good point. It would be nice to see some sort of way that all value generated by content is distributed to all parties from creators to distributors. Maybe some sort of smart contract attached to the item.
That's basically what the idea of curation rewards and benefactors is. But you will never get an implementation that actually gives out value according to everyone who is involved or should get it. A collection of simpler solutions and a culture that acknowledges that there are various ways to contribute value, rather than putting one particular class of user on a pedestal, would suffice.