Comment Re:Doesn't take Karnak the Magnificent... (Score 1) 64
It wasn't Second Life that contracted him to do the work, it was someone with a Second Life account. I don't know anything about Second Life, but context seems to imply that there's no straightforward way to do a local backup of these things, i.e. apparently they can only reside on the Second Life servers. As such, the client did not have the right to delete them, because the creator had some rights to them.
A roughly analogous situation would involve your building a duplex (in real life) and selling half of it to me, and my setting the whole thing on fire one day.
Also, you seem to be confusing "imaginary property" with "intellectual property."
Intellectual property = literature, music, code, etc. Protected by copyright law for centuries in a reasonably well-defined system.
Imaginary property = "I have a property right to the record in the game's database that says that my character has 100,000 gold coins and 75 experience points, and if someone in any way indirectly causes and SQL UPDATE statement that affects that record, it's theft."