What happens if a person asks for a specific phrase as a reply? Is that considered a spam? I can remember when Napster was active. While I was dubious of the the concept at the time, I came to realize that it allowed me to tap into music and performers that I would never be able to listen to otherwise: historically important but no longer accessible through conventional means. For instance listen to this piece of music:

Ignore the French but listen to the melody. It is a combination of Irish and French Canadian Folk Music. I was able to listen to this music only through Napster at the time - which was clearly a case of contravening copyright legislation for modern music but was less so in this case. As an example TV productions are copyrighted for 95 years (in the USA). This means that production companies are like dogs in a manager. They neither publish the content to make it available nor allow anyone else to make it available.
Here are TV shows that are not in public domain but could have been except for legislation passed a few years ago in the USA
I think it is important to cite text and images - not only to avoid the issue of plagiarism but also to give the reader the opportunity to view original sources.
While I note the question "Do you want steemit, the company, to recieve DMCA notices?" does point at the precariousness of this technology - I would encourage you to create an application which allows a distributed form of steemit and remove yourself from the firing line.