I think attribution is key. There is a guy here who posts nothing but youtube videos, so fas as I've seen, and only occasionally adds any comment, and never attribution. Of course, with a youtube video you can go to the original author's channel, so it's not overtly necessary.

The problem I have with this guy is that he doesn't comment on the videos and when he does it's not much or really helpful. He's also not making any money doing it that I can see.

In a way though, he is providing a service, a syndication of sorts. You mentioned backlinks which I would have brought up if you hadn't. This cannot be ignored. Organic backlinks on an authority site are valuable to the original content creator.

Additionally, if the content itself is evergreen, it always has value. As to "fresh" news, no one can consume all the content that is put out, so information on a topic that is a year old could be fresh to some readers because they never saw it when it was fresh.

Bottom line for me, if it is properly attributed and has additional information, like a summary of content or thoughts on the content, I see more of a win-win. It's actually called content curation, which is why I was originally confused about what curation meant here on Steemit.