As the Steemit platform grows, it will happen that thieves will come here and attempt to impersonate a writer, photographer, or other creative producer, copy and repost their work, and get upvotes. I think this potential issue should be addressed before July 4th, so that a precedent is set and early instances of it happening could hopefully be resolved without the thief getting paid.
It's great that people who share their work over the internet, whether it's writing, photos, art, etc. are coming here and getting rewarded for sharing their previous work to Steemit. It's also great that Steemit users get to see some of this work that would otherwise be hiding in the shadows of the Internet. But it's sometimes hard to tell if the work is owned by the account posting it to Steemit. When there is money involved, this can create a problem.
The easiest way to verify the identity of a creator reposting their work here would be to ask for a simple message to be posted on the blog or other site they originally posted their work on. Perhaps they could link to the verification in an introductory post.
Issues:
It's not always easy for voters to know or care where what they're seeing is coming from. I have Googled bits of text from writing and reverse image searched photos when I wanted to know if the original author was posting it or not. Most people probably won't care to.
Active, informed voters can look for an introduction post from the account posting, but what better way would there be to disseminate that someone is verified?
Let's have a discussion with your ideas and thoughts on how to make sure the real creators are getting rewarded on this platform.