Sounds like a good idea
Firstly I must thank you for cheering my day up with the description " the rancid free-for-all of today’s clickbait-infested swamp", it is spot-on!
It remains to be seen how well the system works, but for a lot of commercial sites I can see it would be a great advantage if photos and other materiel could be licensed for a small fee more-or-less instantly. Even for some of us who choose to put things up for free, it would be nice to track its popularity (particularly if your funding is based on "public impact" factors).
However, the issue of meta-data stripping is more complex as it can reveal information about the person they really don't want public. For example, the lat/lon of their home, or a personal identifier if its a crime they reported. Having an agree copyright metadata field that is not stripped by web sites on pain of legal action is much better, so long as phones, etc, always confirm you want it sent in sensitive cases.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
