The problem is that the technology [1] to do this simply doesn't exist. I'd say the core of the problem is that copying a digital artifact is easy, is a solved problem. You simply copy the data that represents the artifact, and now you have another copy.

*Deleting* data (and its cousin, *moving* data) is a nearly intractable problem. How can you verify that someone no longer has access to data that you gave them?

The best we have is to have some sort of ownership token that is maintained in a shared store, and build a requirement that possession of that token is required to use the data. Even this is practically nearly intractable; you have to have some sort of "trusted" hardware or software that is responsible for validating the current possession of the ownership token before using the data.

Physical media is another way of trying to solve this problem, especially if the physical media can somehow be verified and is exfiltration-proof.

[1] I say "technology" here but really I strongly suspect that this is actually impossible given reasonable theoretical assumptions around what data means.

You're trying to solve with technology a problem that lives in the abstract human world. Even the simplest possible case, you make a physical unique object that you define as conferring ownership to the person who possesses or controls it. Someone steals the object, now the person in possession of the object isn't the owner. There's this allure of trying to tie this abstract notion of ownership to a physical thing but it's breaks down immediately. It doesn't even work for physical objects.

Automated enforcement of ownership rules is completely tangential to the actual problem you're running into. You own a physical book, you make a copy then sell the book. That's a copyright violation, no "verification" or whatever nonsense needed. What happened in regards to ownership in this case is already clear. Companies sure do like DRM but it's as much a pale imitation of ownership as anything else.