Steemit is in it's early stages of expansion, if we are to question every new member and ask them for verification, we risk to turn off a lot of people from this platform. I upvote simple posts by people to encourage them to hang around and do better, instead of asking them to be super writers from day one. Later they will start to tell the difference and adjust.  We should let everyone decide for themselves what post is worthy of an upvote or a downvote, if the author is discovered to have made false claims as to ownership of the content they posted, then steemians should get a link in the form of "report this"  for various reasons, like copyright violations,  impersonation, or whatever. This has to be considered and tested wisely, we should not attempt to police steemit or create some sort of authority over users.  Do not ask people to take pics of themselves and post it on steemit to verify themselves, this should be a personal choice. A blogger is not required to verify his/her identity to post on a decentralized blockchain, if they do not wish to do so.  I know people might be concerned because there is a financial motive attached, but that should not make us forget that steemians have the right to privacy.  Let's deal with this issue slowly and not rush to make rules.

Could 2-FA be used? Require a poster to click a link in an email before submitting a post.

And for the record, I think posting things that you didn't create is ok (I've done it myself, a-la reddit), as long as there's the bare minimum of saying something to the effect of "I didn't make this" if it's not obvious, but ideally attribution and linking (when it's something like an image) or brief, selected quotation with link to original posting (with writing or articles).

## A suggsestion on impersonation and original content. ##
Good to read that there are already plans to verify content linked to other platforms. I would like though to suggest something more daring, although not expecting to be implemented at all or in the near future.

There are a number of blockchain services out there offering **alias registration**, be it NXT, Namecoin or other. A first step would be to offer an alternative of signing posts with a key which is related somehow with one of those platforms. To make sure that the content is original, all a user would have to do, is before publishing the content, to **use another service among the many to register it on the blockchain as his own intellectual property**.
Using these two technologies a user will always be able to prove ownership **without necessarily revealing his identity**, a feature that comes handy if one is residing in a country where oppressive regimes reign.
I hope that you people find this solution adequate and maybe implement it.

I have some ideas about this from my experiences at Medium. The same thing happened there with low-life writers ripping off good writers and reposting the content as their own. This will happen here, so I think if there are community members dedicated to investigating this issue, then maybe they should form a group who works together and reviews complaints. There needs to be a complaints system in place to handle this problem. I'll keep thinking of ways to deal with this..........The copycats and spineless marketers are swiftly on their way here. Let's stay vigilant and work together to share knowledge. Maybe we can start a dedicated area that's dedicated to this cause. That way information can be posted and shared about these thefts. Then those members will either be banned or something. I wonder what @ned or @dantheman thinks about this?

![](http://s20.postimg.org/mfw3dy7tp/bill_gates_5000_source.jpg)

Thank you for the info.

I can tell you how streemian.com will tackle the problem: It requires "verification" from the platform we are linking. 

### Reddit
People that want to link their reddit account need to authenticated against reddit using Oauth. Only after successful verification will streemian.com link the account and auto cross-post content

### RSS Blogs
Later this month, streemian.com will allow people to have the content of their blog cross posted on Steem using RSS feeds.
To verify ownership of an account, streemian.com will require users to post a specific token in a post and also need to verify a mail address (not required for reddit). Only after those two verification steps have been completed, will streemian.com auto-cross-post content from RSS-enable feeds to Steem.

**NOTE**, all content that is crossposted by streemian by a verified account will be posted under an account we will create for that specific user. That way, the content owner gets his reward while Streemian.com just simplifies the process for them.