After reading the KW discussion, a poster brought up that non-movement can be choreographically effective. I agree--there are moments in a program when skaters can stop skating and just express (there's a moment in V/M's Mahler program where both come to a stop, and they look like a pair of newlyweds who are looking off together). However, does the COP reward this?
It can be rewarded under the Choreography and/or Interpretation components if used effectively.
Is the COP rewarding busyness for busyness' sake?
Sometimes.
Stopping -- i.e., not skating -- is always going to be penalized or at best tolerated/ignored. It's a skating competition, not a standing competition. But in practice there are often one or more short stops built into programs for skaters to catch their balance and breath, especially with longer programs. If these are brief enough not to diminish the amount of actual skating in the program and used effectively with the choreography, they can be rewarded in the program components as I mentioned above.
Because there are scores for Transitions (i.e., all the skating moves and body moves that happen in between the elements and into and out of the elements), and potential rewards for including non-simple entrances and exits from elements, yes, skaters are often putting in extra turns and steps and flourishes in hopes of earning points. Sometimes it pays off for them, sometimes it doesn't.
There were already often rewards for doing this sort of thing well under 6.0, but there weren't explicit guidelines for judges or skaters so it kind of happened invisibly and unpredictably. Now that the guidelines are clearer (though still never perfect), there's more incentive for skaters to add stuff even if they don't necessarily do it well.
Sometimes it backfires. A difficult entry into a jump usually won't add points if the jump isn't rotated and landed. If it's easier for a skater to land the jump with a simple entry, that might be the better route for that skater to take.
The Transitions component rewards difficulty, quality, variety, and intricacy of the transitions. There's not much point in cramming in lots of brief transitional moves for the sake of variety if the quality suffers as a result.
Oh, and often skaters try to fit many variations into their spins to try to get higher levels -- sometimes they try more than 4 features hoping that even if they don't get credit for some they'll still be able to achieve better than level 1.
Step sequences also may rely on extra steps and extra upper body movements than the minimum required to earn higher levels because the skaters aren't sure they'll get credit for everything if they just do the minimum.
The impression of "busyness for busyness' sake" will often occur when less skilled skaters try to make up in quantity what they can't achieve through quality. The more skilled skaters can often earn credit for features or transitions without looking too busy. I'll look for examples later, but going back a few years Jeff Buttle and Shizuka Arakawa come to mind.
