I'm going to side with Wrath on this aspect, at least in legal theory. Despite having a physical thing in your hands, you have not bought the rights to the property, only the right to use that property, and it's up to the owners of that intellectual property what they consider/want "use" to mean. Whether we think the decisions are "fair" or even rational, means nothing from a legal standpoint.
And you definitely can't "resell the use-license", digital or otherwise.
Consumer protection legislation forces some limits into what shrink-wrap licenses can do to limit the purchasers or 'licensers' rights. Not necessarily in the US, but games are still sold in other places, as well.
This can lead to strange things, were physically distributed games and digitally distributed copies, while theoretically having the same end-user license, will be subject to a completely different set of rules (generally more favourable to the terms of the license in the case of digital downloads).