Well, you state that a two tiered system won't work, but you never really give any reasons as to why you feel that way.

Yes, the site makes money because we access it, however it does not make additional money from those abusing the system.  The idea is to weed out the abusers and reward the honest model makers.

Since you don't necessarily want to burden everyone with a reviewing system of some sort, give people the choice.  If you want to be eligible for earning additional revenue thats great, but you'll need to jump through a hoop or two first.

If you don't, then you can upload your stuff here to your hearts content and never have to jump through any at all.  I think that's fair enough, your thoughts?

I can guarantee you that the moochers and cheaters will vanish in a heartbeat because they'll never want to provide that kind of indentification information and/or probably can not!

I think this is a way to go.

 The second tier would be a little harder to qualify for, and this would be those folks who want to take part in revenue sharing.   The amount of information required would go beyond just a simple email address and paypal account. Your IP would be logged (not foolproof, granted, but it cuts way down on multiple account abuses) to start with and you could not start a duplicate account from the same ip address.

An email address registered with PayPal *is* verified. Useless to fake, because you couldn't get your money out of PayPal.

Sending a code to an email address and the receiver has to enter this code into a webpage before money is sent out is another possibility to verify users.

Any dialup-user gets a new IP address every day. No chance to check this. If you have a need to make it 100%: Use a certificate (sent out via snail-mail) and SSL for upload. A bit softer: Submit Access-ID's via phone (a good way to make some extra money). Anything is better than doing something based on an IP address (I'm able to fake my IP-address while accessing a website, by the way - and I'm not a champion).

No system is going to be perfect.  Someone will always figure a way around it.  Finding something that works is the best you can hope for. 

I keep seeing why ideas can't possibly work.  I'm no programmer, goodness knows, but I have helped run the family business, and I can tell you, not every strategy against theft was perfect -- BUT some worked much better than others.  

For instance, closed circuit camers work great, but the large, forbidding looking shop dog worked even better.  Putting a large forbidding shop dog into your local Best Buy will not work.  It will work in a small boutique auto parts store.  

The small shop can't afford the full spectrum security system.  Does that mean they roll up and go out of business?  No.  It means they use what they have to their best affect.

Instead of promptly slamming shut ideas, can there be a little exploration for how they could be made to work at a reasonable level of security? 

Instead of promptly slamming shut ideas, can there be a little exploration for how they could be made to work at a reasonable level of security?

Do you read that I wrote:  This is a way to go?

Talking on how to implement security for a web based business is not the right place here. This is a well known issue allready solved on some million other websites. Somebody working in the internet business sould be familar with how to do it.  

The absolutly wrong strategy is what ShareCG did (for whatever reason): No security provisions at all. 

I read everyone's, and for every good looking idea, there's a shoot-down.  That's why I said something.  :)  

I didn't mean you specifically, but yours was the last post up when I was responding, so that's the one I used to reply to.  This style of forum rather baffles me for where to respond if I just want to make a general response rather than to a specific post.   

I'm not faulting anyone, I'm saying that there is more merit towards working to what works than towards what doesn't work.   

There is really one main way to do this and that is make sure that what is uploaded is copyrighted and belonged to the person who is uploading it. But that does mean each upload being reviewed.

Who is to judge whether it is good or bad or is going to be popular?

I do think that the owners need to sit down and think about it very carefully. But lets be honest they are making money out everybody's uploadings

And let's also not forget that EVERY site the offers downloads of freebies posted by other people is making money off advertising too! The difference, the others are not paying ANYONE anything for that. They have always kept all the money! Don't point an accusing finger at SCG as if they suddenly became greedy, at least they tried to share with us. It was the users that screwed it up the most ... not SCG. So let's all of us point the finger of blaim where it belongs ... AT OURSELVES!