Why is internal protected not more restrictive than internal?

Question

I\'d like to create an internal auto-property:

internal bool IP { get; protected internal set; }

I thought it would be possible to make the

Answer 1

I would consider this cheating, since Eric Lippert is on SO himself, but he wrote an excellent blog post that considers this issue.

Why Can't I Access A Protected Member From A Derived Class, Part Three

Ultimately, his answer is largely the same as those given by the posters here, but he ads some interesting reasoning behind the desgin of the language and the implementation of these features.