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Re:UK ditches ban on 'legal but harmful' online content in f... by sirsinsalot on Tuesday November 29, 2022 @06:55AM (#33786428)
Whatever rights are decided in law.

A company isn't a person, they can have different and discriminatory laws applied to them, rightly or wrongly.

This is sort-of a side-effect of limited liability.

Re:UK ditches ban on 'legal but harmful' online content in f... by CamperBob2 on Tuesday November 29, 2022 @02:34PM (#33792119)
What other rights should you've forced to give up when you join together with others for business or other purposes?
Re:UK ditches ban on 'legal but harmful' online content in f... by pmyteh on Tuesday November 29, 2022 @03:07PM (#33792567)
You don't give up any rights. Your company (which is a creature of statute) gets whatever rights the law gives it. Which given its privileged position (perpetual succession, limited liability etc.) are inevitably going to be different from those of actual people.

Which is fine. If you want to exercise your right to free speech you can. You can't necessarily make a company exercise those rights on your behalf because the company (in a fairly profound legal sense) isn't you and has limits by law.

Re:UK ditches ban on 'legal but harmful' online content in f... by CamperBob2 on Tuesday November 29, 2022 @03:18PM (#33792677)
In a post-Citizens United setting, what legal backing exists for your opinion here? And make no mistake, that's what it is... your opinion.

"Congress shall make no law" means just that. Everything else is something somebody with a specific agenda made up.

Re:UK ditches ban on 'legal but harmful' online content in f... by int_19h on Tuesday November 29, 2022 @05:04PM (#33794020)
We're not talking about how things legally are in US (especially considering that this isn't even a story about US!), but about what the proper handling of free speech vis a vis corporations should be.

And it's hard to not come to a conclusion that corporations, being legal creations of the state distinct from a mere assembly of individuals, cannot have any natural rights, since their very existence is a privilege; the society can attach whatever restrictions it wants to corporate charters, so long as they're uniform.

(Note that there's a separate question of what restrictions are actually a good idea. I would actually argue for the free speech side here, but that's beyond the point; the point is that, for corporations, either way, we're talking about granted privileges, not inherent rights.)

Separately, "Congress shall make no law", interpreted most literally, means that e.g. state legislatures can make such laws. The First Amendment was not incorporated against the states until 1925, so this country has only had federal free speech protections for less than a century.