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A comment on The Whanganui River in New Zealand is a legal person. Parent comment

Re:The Whanganui River in New Zealand is a legal person by int_19h on Monday April 22, 2019 @06:27PM (#19723653)
How about, you still protect the rights of people that make the corporation - as individuals. In other words, if the corporation can name a specific individual whose rights are being infringed, then they have a case. But the corporation by itself can't claim infringement of its rights.

So for example, with Citizens United, there's no restriction on individuals that make up the company from making political donations from their own personal funds - including those that they earn as owners or employees of said company. But the company cannot use the funds that it owns as an entity in its own right for the same purpose. If its owners want to use those funds for that purpose, they can have the company pay it to them as dividends (taxed accordingly), and then spend them as they see fit - with their own name attached to any such use.

Note that this effectively protects free speech qua speech even for corporations, because there's ultimately always a person speaking.

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Re:The Whanganui River in New Zealand is a legal person by bluGill on Tuesday April 23, 2019 @09:08AM (#19728195)
That doesn't work, for the exact example you cite. I am not rich enough to afford to buy a TV ad (this includes both production costs and airtime - I'm not an advertising expert nor a good actor so I'd need to hire people to make a good ad). The only way I can afford to get a TV ad out is to get a bunch of like minded people together: create a company with the express purpose of buying our ad, but your just prohibited our company from buying that ad.
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Re:The Whanganui River in New Zealand is a legal person by tathougies on Monday April 22, 2019 @11:36PM (#19725382)
Seeing as one individual person can own a corporation and thus have unquestioned control over how the Corp spends its money, then yes one person's individual rights are being infringed upon -- namely the right to use ones material resources to further political interests. In the case of one or a few owners, the owners could alternatively authorize a share buyback to simply transfer money between then and the firm
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Re:The Whanganui River in New Zealand is a legal person by int_19h on Tuesday April 23, 2019 @01:42AM (#19725886)
They're welcome to do it in that manner - and the very fact that they can shows that it's not really an infringement on their right. The point is that it's still freedom of John Doe to speak, not freedom of John Doe LLC to speak.
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