First, Your assertion is basically not that compliance with AGPL is not hard, it's that "you could just do more than the license requires". That is always true

First, Your assertion is basically not that compliance with AGPL is not hard, it's that "you could just do more than the license requires". That is always true, even for non-open source licenses. You could take MIT code and comply not just by publishing a notice but by publishing all of it. I don't think that is a meaningful argument against the annoyance of having to collate and publish notices. Imagine if you have a commercial license that requires you be able to allow them to look through your books to verify software licensing, that often has high cost. Your suggestion is basically "why not just make your books public" (IE more than the contract requires). I don't think that's a meaningful argument against the cost of compliance, because that's not about compliance with this license, but instead one that requires more. The whole point of contracts/licenses is that they are a deal. What you are suggesting is a very different deal, and we'd deal with it a very different way.