I believe "owner" here is just referring to classical property rights, you literally own the magnetized platter which encodes the program, like you literally ow

I believe "owner" here is just referring to classical property rights, you literally own the magnetized platter which encodes the program, like you literally own the ink and paper that makes up a book. Once you've downloaded the software you have a version of it on your hard disk (or ssd) that you literally "own" (but you don't own the copyright to it).