With the end of physical PlayStation games looming, the need for clear digital ownership rights is more pressing than ever.
For its part, Sony believes your rights are very clear: you do not own your digital games, and it's unlikely you're stupid enough to believe otherwise. At least, that's roughly the argument the company's lawyers are presenting in response to a proposed class-action lawsuit.
Sony argues that its current customer-facing disclosures ensure that "reasonable consumers would not be misled" into believing they actually own their digital games. That's according to a Game File report (paid article link) citing an August 21 filing Sony's lawyers made in California's Northern District.
I think for modern machines they easily could put out a software update and brick your discs, I definitely agree with that, but it has the data still on the disc, you own that and I'm sure some tech wizards could extract that and emulate it somehow.
As for older machines that don't even connect to the internet, your comment is blatantly wrong. So I think there's a bit of multifaceted issues being discussed.