It's not the same discussion. a lot more sites pay content creators now. There are many people that work hard on their content. Many sites are engaged in fostering hijacked content, and they quietly do nothing about it because it makes them a lot of untraceable money, a LOT more money than 9gag ever made off of stolen memes... Perhaps it should be called Content Laundering?

Reddit has even gone as far as to prohibit posting of OC by creators themselves by banning their posts and accounts when they post their own work, calling it "self promotion", while other accounts violate the rule with obvious immunity. They also ban subreddits after they are cultivated and curated too, many times for no good reason. I understand that spam needs to be controlled, but how moderation occurs on Reddit, it's totally not conducted in a normal nor reasonable manner at all.