Bitcoin is commonly held to be worth something, i.e., an asset. But there are many who argue that its “true” value is 0. Something similar to that divergence is happening here. We, as a society, have a convention, a habit, where copyrighted works, trademarks, mining rights, etc. are restricted by law to be controlled by a single legal entity. This makes these a tradable commodity. But if the law did not apply to these, they would become worthless. It is, in fact, these laws which have created this tradable commodity from nothing. Other laws could be created to do the same to any number of currently freely available things; this does not prove that these things should be covered by such laws merely because it would create a kind of property which would have value.