The "owning video games" narrative is really tiresome

For some reason for a couple of years now videos about "owning" video games pop up at semi-regular intervals. And, so far, I have not seen a single one that actually handles the subject correctly.

It has become really tiresome to see authors, even those who should know better, talk about the ownership of video games and very explicitly and directly comparing it to ownership of physical objects.

Indeed, just recently I saw once again such a video, where the author (who is the kind of educated person who should know better) explicitly made the stereotypical comparison with "imagine if you buy a hammer, and later the manufacturer comes to your home and takes it away."

He also explicitly talked about how video games "have become" license-based (or at least attempted to, by the publishers), as if they had not been in the past and this were a new thing that the gaming industry is trying to introduce into the mix.

Sigh. The sheer ignorance is so tiresome by this point. 

"Ownership" of intangible intellectual property is not the same thing as ownership of a physical object, like a hammer or a can of beans. It outright cannot be the same thing, at all. It's physically impossible for it to work in the same way. The laws governing this kind of "ownership" are completely different and separate, and even from an outright logical point of view it cannot be the same.

If you buy a book, you do own the physical object itself, in other words the paper, ink and other physical materials that the physical book is made of. Those are yours to do whatever you want with them. However, you do not own the contents of the book, ie. the textual and graphical information contained in the book. That's still owned 100% by the publisher (or, in some cases, the original author), not you.

It's not even logically possible to "own" the contents, the intangible intellectual property. What would that even mean, from a legal or even logical point of view? Does the intangible intellectual property have millions of "owners" if that many people have purchased a copy? No. The sole owner is still the publisher. 

Likewise, if you buy a movie in a BluRay disc, you do own the physical object itself, but you do not own the movie itself. If you buy a piece of software, like a video game, in a physical medium like a BluRay disc, you likewise now own the physical object itself, but you do not own the game itself. The ownership of the game is still with the publisher, not you.

With digital goods you own even less. That's because now there is no physical object to buy and be in possession of. You only have digital information, and that's it. You do not own that information. It's still owned by the publisher or author (also the online distributor, eg. Valve, Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo, etc. might have some kind of rights to it as well, depending on what kind of contract they have with the author or publisher.)

What you do own is a license to use the copy you have of the intangible intellectual property. That's right: What you are buying is a license, even if it's an implied one. And that's what you actually do own, ie. the license, not the piece of literature, music, movie or video game. The license is what you own, not the intellectual property itself.

And that has always been the case. It's not some kind of "new" thing that greedy video game publishers are trying to push onto you.

(In most cases this "license to use" is implied rather than explicitly written, and is derived from the copyright and intellectual property laws of your country, and enforced by the legal system of your country. However, it's still just a license, whether explicit or implied by law, that gives you permission to use said copy of the intellectual property. You own the license, not the work itself.)

It's not wrong per se to say that you "own a video game", but that word has to be understood correctly in context, as in this case it has a different meaning than with physical objects. "Owning" a video game is essentially short for owning a purchased license to use a copy of the video game.

The problem is that a lot of people misunderstand this entire thing, and think that "owning" a video game is the same thing as owning a hammer. It's not.

A Ubisoft spokesperson (or whoever he was) became infamous some years ago because of uttering the completely thoughtless and stupid idea that "gamers should get comfortable with not owning games." That's an extremely poorly worded sentiment, and rather obviously most people interpreted it in the wrong way, and are still outraged about it.

I'm not exactly sure what he actually meant (I haven't examined that interview in great detail), but I would assume that he meant one of two possibilities:

1. That gamers should really learn exactly what I wrote above. In other words, you do not "own" a copy of intellectual property. What you own is a license to use it. That's just a fact, and has always been, and gamers should learn and "get comfortable" with that fact. It's just how the law works, has always worked, and it literally cannot work in any other way. It has never been any different.
2. Or, perhaps (and I think more likely), what he was actually trying to say is that gamers should "get comfortable" with conditional and restricted licenses that are not the lifetime license that the law grants when no explicit license has been attached. In other words, that video games are more and more going into the direction of being "services" that are in one way or another "subscription-based" or, at a minimum, limited or conditional in some manner.

Sure, the second option (which is likely what he meant) is still a very bad and quite a douche attitude, but it would have been a much more precise and correct way to phrase what he was trying to say, rather than talking about "not owning" the games.