What if every digital object (photo, learning resource, website) had an attribution metatag?
In a similar way that encryption keys are handed out by a small number of parties, digital resources could be tagged with encrypted information which can be easily matched against a database to find out who created the object, but which would be difficult (impossible?) to fake.
The objective of these attribution meta tags would not be to make content rights easier to manage (although this would be a consequence), but to act to improve the reliability of online data and resources. It would also allow for searching for resources created by individuals.
Obviously such a system would be an opt-in system.