The essence of a right is something you can enforce at law. But intellectual property rights are entirely essence. They spring from the good graces of Congress; they protect interests that have no existence whatsoever beyond that which the law grants them. Rights in real property track boundaries and borders. Rights in tangible property track things. Rights in virtual property track bits on a server somewhere. But intellectual property rights? They spring from whole cloth. To talk about intellectual property rights is to talk about their enforcement. They exist where -- and only where -- a court will issue an injunction or order damages. If we are talking about intellectual property rights inside of games, we're talking about bringing real-world law into the picture. So, saying that players keep their own intellectual property rights in the game, as a practical matter, means that Second Life is inviting real-life law into the game. It used to be that copyright stopped at the boundary between Second Life and the first life. Players (in their capacity as players, that is) couldn't have copyright causes of action against each other, because the EULA forced them to give up their copyrights. If you ripped off my content, sure, you might be infringing my copyright, but it wasn't my copyright any more. It was Second Life's, and I wouldn't have standing to sue you. Second Life itself wouldn't need to sue you, because -- see Julian's point above -- they could just delete your account and destroy the infringing virtual items. But once I keep my copyrights, I can sue you for infringement. Second Life has, in effect, asked real-world courts to handle a class of disputes among is players. Which is, perhaps, why Yochai Benkler sees Second Life's decision as so profoundly dystopic.