Jack Balkin
Submitted by Taran on Sun, 06/03/2007 - 04:52
...statutory protection of free speech rights by players may conflict with the platform owner's constitutional right to design. The objection is not simply based on the platform owner's property rights in the game space; rather, it is based on the platform owner's constitutional interest in creating and overseeing a collaborative work of art, somewhat like the First Amendment interests of a director of an improvisational theater. In assessing this conflict, everything depends on the nature of the virtual space that the platform owner has created.

In the context of SecondLife...
Free speech and copyright/trademark may conflict as Balkin said (ibid):
Thus, the question becomes whether the platform owner is the real platform owner - when all copyrights belong to residents. It also leads to the question as to whether a person can revoke their copyrights in the virtual world...