One of my concerns for Steemit's future stems from the requirement that images = links. These links are most often to copyrighted content, sometimes to stock photos. It's one thing when a blogger uses your images on a not for direct profit post... Quite another when that image is part of blog content that makes more money than most books.

There's no way to sue the Blockchain, but Steemit could encounter Pirate Bay type issues with server hosting. And since the Blockchain is transparent, rights holders could track the movement of Steem to Bitcoin to exchange to bank, and identify the unauthorized user.

I like your idea since it includes rights holders in the income stream, and keeps users accountable for their decisions to use other people's content. The main difficulty I see is that for any content held by a corporation, you're talking about dealing with sclerotic institutions whose first reaction to "Hey, we found a way for you to monetize what's now piracy" will be to sue and or issue take down notices and or sue the founders personally...

That said, this is a great step in the right direction when it comes to fairness to original content creators who are now not sharing in the wealth being created partially by piggy backing on their content.