I have noticed similar, yes - but at least Steemit (if guided as was intended) will motivate people to increase their ability to generate unique content in order to get rewarded.. If half the world wants to talk to itself about the same subjects over and over again, without letting in anything new - then there's not much we can do about that (except possibly project a giant laser image onto the moon with more interesting content for them to look at .. but i digress) :)

The idea of identifying legitimate copyright owners and pointing payouts to them should be enough to fix the situation in most cases, yes.