So who actually owns that stuff on your hard drive?

Heh. What did you just say?

Over the Christmas holiday, I received a $20 PlayStation Network card from my brother (which has now been established as somewhat of a tradition between us). I leaped into the PlayStation Store headfirst and eventually settled on Assassin's Creed II for around $18 which included all the additional DLC.

Fast forward a few weeks. I'm sitting in my room establishing a new IGN profile (which you can find here) and adding games I own to it. IGN gives you an "estimated value" of your game collection to, I'm guessing, facilitate a nerdy game of "who has the biggest wang in the room". That's when an issue I've pondered since I began purchasing digital goods started to weigh heavy enough on my mind to stop reading Crime and Punishment and hammer out a blog entry on it. Essentially, the issue is this: do I actually own Assassin's Creed II?

No. I do not. Per the PlayStation.com's Terms of Service:

Regardless of the permissions we give you to use the Content, we remain the sole owner of all the Content, and you do not acquire any ownership rights in the Content by assembling, creating files, downloading or saving any of it. If we have included an author attribution, a trademark or copyright notice or other legal notices on the Content, you should not remove or alter any of these. -PlayStation.com: Terms of Service, Section 4.

 This may come as a surprise to you, but it certainly didn't surprise me. I have long thought-on and explored the issue of digital content and ownership rights which began upon a rather sour experience with iTunes (we won't get into that). Digital music shoppers undoubtedly already know what I'm talking about. The content is being licensed to me. I am able to access it and download it to my harddrive, but it's not mine. However, if I had chosen to buy a physical copy of Assassin's Creed II, (or a CD from a physical retailer) I would have a completely different set of rights, i.e. I would own it.

Ezio is upset with me because I chose convenience over actual ownership. Blame my brother actually.

If you have ever participated in, or gleefully observed, the so-called "GameStop Debate," it's likely that you are familiar with the first-sale doctrine. GameStop owes its existence to the first-sale doctrine since it:

...allows the purchaser to transfer (i.e., sell, lend or give away) a particular lawfully made copy of the copyrighted work without permission once it has been obtained. This means that the copyright holder's rights to control the change of ownership of a particular copy ends once ownership of that copy has passed to someone else, as long as the copy itself is not an infringing copy -Wikipedia

 First-sale doesn't apply to most digital content since you, usually, do not own it, and it's precisely why I scoffed at IGN's "estimated value" of my video game collection. I don't think their purpose was to show you the monetary assets your sitting on, but to show you how much you've invested into gaming in dollars and cents. Or, by proxy, to show you how much of a lame-ass nerd you are... but I digress.
I can't resell my digitally licensed copy of Assassin's Creed II to GameStop, but I can access it and redownload it as much as I want, granted I download it to no more than five authorized PS3 consoles. What digital content lacks in actual ownership, it makes up for it (to some small extent) by virtue of convenience of supply.

Internet, meet Convenience Bear

The convenience of digital content really needs no exposition by me. You already probably know the pros and cons just by living in the world and having the Internet. Sure, I don't physically own ACII, but all I had to do to get it was sit on my ass and press a few buttons. And I could have done this at any time, even 4AM on a Sunday.

My friend got this game. Our parents
thought we were Satanists.

Another interesting facet of digital content ownership (or lack thereof) is how the prospect of infinite supply affects pricing. I haven't conducted enough issue of the subject, so don't take anything I have to say as authoritative or sourced in any way (maybe later, but I don't have enough time now). If you don't know how it works, the pricing saga of Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne in America perfectly illustrates how supply and demand affects pricing as far as physical ownership is concerned. Nocturne was released in America to critical acclaim and "good" sales (as stated by the Megami Tensei Wiki, I couldn't find US sales data), but in the years after its release, the price of a new or used copy of the game shot up to around $60 at points. A reprint of the game in 2008 stabilized those prices and you can currently pick up a new copy of the game for $30 or less.
How can digital content possibly be affected by this since the supply is literally limitless? I guess it can't. Does the advent of digital content, assuming that whatever you're looking for is available digitally, completely eliminate supply considerations? It seems obvious, but I'm no economist. I do know that prices of new things tend to go down as new-er things come along and that will (probably) never change...
So what thoughts do you have? Comment away.