Imagine you have two web pages.

One is a recipe for apple fritters, and the other is an informal ranking of apples by flavor.

Let's say your apple fritter recipe links to your apple ranking list.

Later, you discover someone copied your apple fritter recipe without credit, but it still links to your apple ranking list, using the same wording as your recipe. They're getting more Google SERP juice and ad revenue than yours, despite stealing your article.

Do you see the problem?