What is the difference between a &quot;Natural&quot; person and an &quot;Artificial&quot; / &quot;Legal&quot; person? I generally understand that 'natural' people are living human beings and 'artificial' / 'legal' people can be private entities / corporations. I know artificial people can be given some of the same rights as living human beings. What rights are corporations actually given? What was the purpose and law that created this concept? Is it possible for a 'natural' person to get the benefits of an 'artificial' person?
Rights What rights are corporations actually given? Rights Corporations Have Primarily economic rights such as the right to own and transfer property, the right to enter into and enforce contracts, the right to sue for harms to property interests and breaches of contracts, the right to eminent domain compensation for takings of property, the right to employ agents and hire employees, and the right to intellectual property rights in trade names and trademarks. But, also, the right to engage in commercial speech, to petition the government, the right to a jury trial, and the right to due process. Corporations can enjoy attorney-client and accountant-client privileges for their confidential communications, but not doctor-patient, spousal, clergy-parishioner, or therapist-client privileges. Rights Corporations Lack On the other hand, corporations do not have the right not to self-incriminate themselves, outside some very narrow circumstances they cannot vote, and they do not themselves have the freedom of religion in most cases (although there are exceptions for religious institutions and when the religious rights of owners of closely held entities are affected). Corporations do not necessarily have the right to bear arms. Corporations do not have rights inherent in human form (e.g. the right to obtain an abortion or use contraception, the right to be free from excessive corporal punishment, the right to raise children without undue interference, the right to not be owned or enslaved). Corporations do not have the right to have debts discharged in a Chapter 7 bankruptcy. Corporations are not entitled to exempt any other their assets from creditor's claims. Corporations do not have the right to represent themselves in court without a lawyer or to serve on juries. Corporations do not have the right to apply for most kinds of government jobs or to run for office. Corporations are not eligible for most ordinary welfare programs (like TANF, food stamps, Medicaid, Social Security, disability payments, veteran's benefits), but are eligible for a variety of tax credits and business grants, which are often called &quot;corporate welfare&quot; (even though almost all &quot;corporate welfare&quot; is also available to sole proprietors and general partnerships). While corporations cannot be &quot;drafted&quot; into a war like humans, they can be compelled to carry out governmental tasks in wartime. What was the purpose and law that created this concept? Purposes One reason was to allow passive investors to pool investments for a business purpose in exchange for a share of profits and a return of investment, much like a lender would, without liability in excess of the amount invested, thus limiting the risk of investing in a venture that could be a horrible failure. Closely related was the goal of separating management and ownership, so that the economic value of an operating business could be transferred from one passive owner to another without interfering with or impacting the operation of the business. Corporations made it easier to be a true &quot;capitalist&quot;, i.e. someone who generates income from ownership of property with economic value that is made available to businesses, without actually being a skilled manager or producer within a business. Before corporations and business trusts, all business owners had the right and obligation to manage the business and unlimited liability for any debts incurred by the businesses in which they invested even if they had no personal fault in causing that liability other than making their funds available for someone else to use in exchange for a share of the profits from the business. Another purpose was to protect the public and customers from the operations of complex enterprises and businesses by allowing them to hold the enterprise liable without knowing who in particular in the enterprise harmed them in precisely which manner. As long as it can be shown that somehow the enterprise or someone in it caused harm, it can be held accountable and none of its assets can be shielded out of a desire to protect the personal survival and well being of a natural person (who would normally have exemptions from creditors). Similarly, vendors and creditors and customers can hold the corporation responsible even if the management and employees all change over time, its headquarters relocated, etc., without having to deal with renegotiating any contracts regarding sources of payment or who in particular must fulfill the corporation's obligations. Legal History In English law, the earlier development was the trust, in which a human being was given assets to manage subject to certain terms rather than as his own property, for the benefit of other beneficiaries, without having personal liability for the trust assets except due to his own personal management of those assets. An important transitional form was the &quot;corporation sole&quot; (which is how the Roman Catholic church is organized) in which a single person, usually a high ranking clergyman acted as what we would now call a trustee with respect to all of a non-profit institution's property and rights, and could pass all of that property and all of those rights as a single unit to a successor to the same position, but unlike an aristocrat, the embodiment of a corporation sole was not entitled to use the assets of the corporation for personal benefit beyond what was necessary for his humble personal needs pursuant to vows of personal poverty. The earliest private, investor owned corporations, like the East India Company, were created ad hoc by individual pieces of legislation, much like we might create a stadium authority or transportation district today. Towards the end of the 19th century and beyond, general statutes allowing particular kinds of corporations (e.g. ditch companies, or railroad companies) were established, and later, general corporate statutes were adopted. These statutes were also informed by the case law of fiduciary duties created for trusts, estates, partnerships, and in agency law, by common law tort doctrines such as vicarious liability (originally developed for natural persons with employees and agents), by a common law of commercial property and contracts related to such property, by tax laws, and so on. Accounting customs and practices also became enmeshed in corporate law. In the 20th century, especially in response to the Great Depression, a new class of regulatory laws called &quot;securities laws&quot; regulated big businesses with many shareholders and the marketing of shares in these kinds of companies to members of the general public. Benefits Is it possible for a 'natural' person to get the benefits of an 'artificial' person? There are really no rights that an artificial person has that a natural person does not. The notion that corporations have rights that adult human beings do not is mostly a myth that is really targeted at the abuses of big businesses generally, something that was an issue in the days of large sole proprietorships and partnerships and trusts long before the corporate form was widespread. Corporations can insulate business owners (especially passive investors) and business managers from civil liability for broken contracts and from torts difficult to localize to a single person, in ways that would be difficult to achieve for sole proprietors or partners in a general partnership. But, the corporations themselves don't have rights or privileges beyond those of human beings. Also, a &quot;natural person&quot; can create a solely owned corporation or limited liability company (or many of them) for a trivially small filing fee (often $50) and very modest legal fees from a private lawyer if the natural person doesn't do the work without the assistance of a lawyer, if they find it useful to do so.
Short Answer No. An AI cannot own a company. Artificial intelligences are not legal persons. The law recognizes human beings and legally recognized entities as persons. It does not recognize AIs or for that matter non-human species as persons except in a handful of jurisdictions that recognize, for example, some select rivers as legal persons (e.g. New Zealand). Approximate Alternatives Something close would be possible, however. It is possible to establish a non-profit corporation without owners, or to establish a non-profit entity that is not a corporation (often called a &quot;foundation&quot;) that has no owners. These entities are required to have humans who serve on a board of directors. But, the nonprofit entity or foundation could have bylaws that delegate decision making responsibility on all or many matters to an AI, in much the way that decision making responsibility of all or many matters might be delegated to the CEO of a nonprofit corporation. While the AI can't own anything and indeed, to the contrary, would be owned by the entity, the AI's actions could cause the entity to earn income, to acquire and dispose of property, and to participate in lawsuits. And, while most non-profit entities and foundations are designed to have charitable purposes in order to garner tax benefits, there are many kinds of non-profits that exist for non-charitable purposes (e.g. country clubs, stock exchanges, HOAs and political organizations). If an AI was vested with management of most key parts of an entity's operations, that entity had no owners, and its board of directors was relatively docile, this would come reasonably close, in practice, to what an AI owned entity would look like. How The Law Could Be Changed Indeed, one plausible form of organization for the AI would be as a political organization which could be devoted to the purpose of reforming the law to give AIs personhood status. If one U.S. state did so, for example, this would allow all AIs to use that state's law to form entities owned by them, that could operate in any U.S. state, since geographic constraints do not really apply to AIs. And, it doesn't take that much money to lobby a single state to adopt a law if there is no obvious constituency to oppose the adoption of the law. Analogous Historical Precedents There are deep historical precedents for allowing people who were not legally allowed to own property to manage businesses. In the Roman Empire, the practice of having a slave operate a business or venture or transaction as an agent of the slave's owner was well recognized. This was also true, to a much narrower extent and much less frequently, under American chattel slavery. In the medieval and early modern era in Europe and in the post-colonial regimes in the Americas, it was not uncommon in jurisdictions that did nt otherwise recognize the right of a married woman to own property or to be recognized as a legal person in a court to be allowed to manage her husband's affairs on his behalf in his absence as his delegate agent to do so (often for long periods of time, for example, when the husband was away at war, and for entire fiefdoms for which the aristocratic husband was the lord). European law also recognized the concept that when a royal or noble title was inherited by an oldest son due to the death of his father, when the son was just a child, that the mother could serve a regent for the son and manage the affairs of the jurisdiction associated with the son's title, even though the mother was not legally permitted to hold that title in her own right.
Not that I am aware of. A person who 'owns' a domain is entitled to utilize that domain including for the purposes of receiving emails. With physical mail, it is a crime in most countries to intentionally interfere with mail that is not addressed to you. For example - Australia. However, this is statute law and as such does not extend to emails - even if it did, if you own the domain then you are the person to whom it was addressed. I note that you seem to misunderstand "confidential" - this only arises in the context of a special relationship between the person transmitting the information and the person receiving it. Usually this is a contractual obligation between A and B but it can be imposed by law (e.g. doctor-patient, banker-client, lawyer-client, GDPR etc.). If A sends confidential (as between A &amp; B) information to C, C is under no general obligation to keep it confidential if C has no relationship of confidentiality with A or B. If C discloses it and B suffers damage, B sues A for breach of confidence (or the government prosecutes A for breaking the law); B has no case against C. For your situation, where B has allowed A to send the information to an obsolete address then B has contributed to the breach to an extent that B would be extremely unlikely to succeed in a suit against A.
That book provides advice on legal writing; it is not a source of rules for legal writing. Rather than repeatedly identifying themselves using their full name, parties customarily refer to themselves in the third person, e.g., &quot;The defendant refused to waive his Sixth Amendment right to a speedy trial.&quot; In practice, though, pro se litigants regularly refer to themselves in the first person, and there is no formal consequence for this.
It depends on whether &quot;person&quot; means &quot;owner&quot; If Bob is liable, it's not under the Impounding Act of 1955. In that Act, the occupier of land is allowed, but not required to impound trespassing animals. This is made clear in s 21 of the Act, which says &quot;the occupier...may seize and impound any stock trespassing on the land.&quot; A quick search finds no sections of the Act requiring an occupier to impound trespassing cattle. So it seems Bob is free to send the cattle on their way, at least under the Impounding Act. However, liability for cattle and cars is also covered by the &quot;Animals Law Reform Act of 1989.&quot; The two subsections of &quot;Section 5&quot; of that Act appear to broaden the class of people who could be held liable for damage “caused by an animal straying onto a highway.” Neither subsection explicitly mentions the owner. Instead, both talk about the &quot;person&quot; who is liable. The first, s 5(1) says the part of the common law that “excludes or restricts” “the duty that a person might owe to others to take reasonable care” to prevent damage no longer applies in New Zealand. The second, s 5(2), says a court must determine &quot;whether a person is liable...for damage caused by an animal straying onto a particular highway...&quot; Given that Impounding Act explicitly says &quot;owner&quot; not &quot;person,&quot; common sense suggests the use of the word &quot;person&quot; rather than &quot;owner&quot; in the Animals Law Act of 1989 means that Act allows others besides the owner to be held liable for damages. Whether New Zealand courts agree, and whether they have interpreted the “Animal Laws Act” in a way that would include Bob is a matter of fact that can only be answered by someone who knows New Zealand law. Added: Something fun to read Law professor Robert Ellickson studied how people actually resolve disputes over wandering cattle in Shasta county in northern California. There's a readable summary of what he found here. (The title of his book, &quot;Order without law,&quot; sums up his main finding -- there are rules that are enforced, but those rules have little to do with the formal law or law enforcement.)
From the GDPR's definitions: ‘personal data’ means any information relating to an identified or identifiable natural person (‘data subject’); an identifiable natural person is one who can be identified, directly or indirectly, in particular by reference to an identifier such as a name, an identification number, location data, an online identifier or to one or more factors specific to the physical, physiological, genetic, mental, economic, cultural or social identity of that natural person; This blurred image would be &quot;information relating to an identified ... natural person (‘data subject’).&quot; It does not matter whether the person can be identified using the information in question. Therefore, the answer to your question Under GDPR, does blurhash of a profile picture count as personal data is yes.
If that person becomes incapacitated or is deemed unfit to make their own decisions, will I be required to be physically present (for example, to sign something) to make those decisions if called upon? While it is customary for someone making decisions as weighty as removal of life support, to come to the hospital or care facility in person and discuss the issues with treating physicians, it isn't required. When you are physically there it is easier for you to personally assess the patient's condition rather than just taking someone else's word for it, and you have more informal access to everything that is going on in terms of people coming in and out of the patient's room, providers you wouldn't have known to speak to initiating conversations with you (e.g. there is typically an ER nurse for each shift, several residents doing rounds checking on a patient, and often also an outside specialist doctor involved in the treatment team). It is also usually easy when you are physically in a hospital to locate someone knowledgable and familiar with the kinds of issues you are facing at the moment to provide spiritual and religious guidance if you feel this would help you make your decision, while your neighborhood clergy person may not have a good understanding of these issues since they don't come up as often for someone is doesn't frequently spend time around people being treated in hospitals or hospices. And, this kind of pastoral counseling requires not just religious knowledge but an understanding of the options that are being presented through the lens of what is religiously and morally important about the differences between the different options. When I was an attorney for a hospital handling these issues for the hospital, we would have been willing to work with an out of state medical power of attorney agent without their physical presence. But, the fact that this was deep in the Rocky Mountains far from other urban areas (i.e. Grand Junction, Colorado) may have influenced a willingness to be flexible since it would often take a lot of time and money for someone to arrive in person. Also, while the medical power of attorney gives a specific person authority to act, an advanced medical directive is simply a document that goes into a patient's medical record that advises treating providers of the patient's intent and doesn't actually need next of kin approval or a medical power of attorney agent's say so to implement, although better practice is to seek that consent first in case there are any reasons why that advanced medical directive might have been procured improperly from someone lacking capacity or subsequently revoked. There usually will be forms for a medical power of attorney agent to sign, not authorizing a particular medical procedure, but authorizing treatment in general and providing personal and financial information about the patient in connection with admitting that person. But, these days, hospitals are relatively comfortable with handling that paperwork via fax or scanned copies sent via email, and some of the more flexible hospitals will even accept photos of signed documents sent via text message.
Presumably you mean "and make untrue accusations of wrong-doing". In the US, defamation involves statements about a legal person, and a place, government or government body, or industry is not a legal personal (a specific business can be, however). In the course of "defaming" a city, you might end up defaming a supposedly fictitious individual who bears a striking resemblance to a real person, for example a made-up New York real estate tycoon named Ronald Rump who runs for president. Or you could defame the "police department of Bug Tussle" which in fact is composed of only one person -- that is, you refer to a group but the group is so small that it actually refers to an identifiable individual. See this answer regarding defaming people in fiction. Okay, it's not actually true that a government can't be a legal person. The fact that in the US a government can't sue for defamation would be rooted in the First Amendment, and is surely embodied in case law that is lurking. In Canada, governments have had more power to pursue critic via defamation suits. In Ontario, Halton Hills (Town) v. Kerouac 80 O.R. (3d) 577 (2006) says that "a government may not sue in defamation". I expect that there is some such ruling in the history of US law.