There's an important comment in that article. Tanner Swett says:

    [T]here's already a word for the concept of Colour: "provenance"

So, to enforce copyright, it would be necessary to produce the "provenance" of any artifact (e.g. USB key) in our posession at any time. And, of course, that doesn't mean having the sales receipt from the grocery store where you bought it, it means being able to produce a record of every data transfer it ever made, and then records of every data transfer those devices ever made, ad infinitum, ad absurdum.