That’s a fair point, and I agree DRM-style control over content distribution hasn’t worked very well.

The distinction I’m thinking about is less about restricting the movement of content and more about tracking provenance. In other words, not trying to prevent copying or remixing, but making it easier to identify where something first appeared and who originally created it.

Music is an imperfect example, but the infrastructure around identifiers, registries, and rights databases at least creates a shared reference point for attribution. Internet-native media doesn’t really have anything comparable yet.

So the question I’m curious about is whether a similar kind of reference layer could exist for images, memes, and short-form media, even if the content itself continues to move freely?