It seems Bruce Willis was never going to do an "earnest action man with a heart of gold" trick off the silver screen. Reports that he was planning to sue Apple for the right to pass on his (reportedly) £40,000 worth of iTunes music to his daughters now appear to be just sound and fury. But the uncredited rumour, which was reported by various sites, definitely seems to have struck a nerve. Many people seem surprised to learn that $0.99/track purchases aren't theirs in perpetuity and to pass on, but are rather a licence to listen to the music for this lifetime only.

Putting to one side the issue of whether Willis's daughters would want his music collection in the first place, an important question has been raised: just what is the concept of "ownership" of music, movies, games, books and media in general when a physical copy does not exist?

While the Guardian gets by well enough through being, well, promiscuous with its content, many traditional media companies have all decided to keep rather more of a firm hand on theirs. Apple probably isn't really a copyright warrior, but the example of iTunes Plus and iTunes Match certainly suggest they're keen to see some progress in the market (mostly in pursuit of better user experience, one suspects). But even the most valuable company in the world has to slog through the morass of copyright lawyers before they even get a chance of meeting someone who might get to hang out on a yacht with Peter Mandelson. And Bruce, Look Who's Talking; you made all of your money from movie companies, who certainly aren't going to you pass on your iTunes movies to your daughters either.

So what are we talking about passing on? A physical artefact holding the MP3 files? It's hard to know if that could be illegal, though accessing the contents or playing the music would definitely cross the line. No, a music collection is laden with history, and the sentimentality of passing on a box of LPs might not be the same as an iPod, but it's still there.

In a sense, what you're really passing on in terms of media is curation; the collection that you've built. This has always been the case with books, but we've only had recorded music for the mass market for around 100 years; we really don't know if this is the same experience. Couldn't Bruce just share the whole playlist on Spotify once he Dies Hard (OK, I'm done)? And that's always been done in a more formative way; you don't just pass on your music to your offspring, you try and try to coach them into liking what they like, then sit sullen as they listen to music their peers like and ignore your Dire Straits love (sorry Dad, I'm coming round to them now).

And while Bruce isn't a Twitter user (yet), the question of what happens to content created online after people pass on is much more complicated. Terms of service for most services allow for content to be deleted, but often creative work will have been reposted, shared more widely and copied widely already, so we are all going to have to learn to loosen our grip a little and accept that even loose parody and fair use policies aren't going to stop jokes in bad taste, quoting out of context or outright trolling with content we've created once we die.

Willis's alleged realisation that he's spent £40K on leases just highlights a bigger question for me, and one that will define copyright conversations for the foreseeable: just what does it mean to own a digital file, and how will we police and promote both commercial and private use. Napster only appeared in 13 years ago, and since then file sharing has exploded. Web 2.0 has existed (by that name, at least) since 2004, and since then we've created vast amounts of content online through web services. Where these two trends lead will be interesting, but they definitely don't present us with easy choices or simple fixes for copyright and licensing reform, or, perhaps more importantly, for creativity in general.