This article argues that at present the EU's legal and policy approach to the balance between consumer rights in digital goods and intellectual property rights in the same material has consistently favoured intellectual property rights. As a result, there has been a progressive limitation on the capacity of consumers to engage with, and exercise property rights over, digital goods. The article traces this imbalance to a lack of clarity in the definitions of property under the Charter of Fundamental Rights as well as the Union's preference for market over socially oriented law and policy and an approach of functional equivalence with the traditional market.