Corporate personhood is the idea that a corporation is treated as a person, or can act as a person. It is a complicated idea, and I agree and disagree with certain parts of this idea. I think we should think of a corporation as the people who work for it, instead of as physical thing or individual. The problem with this idea, is that when a company is celebrated, everyone wants to be recognized, but when a company is punished, no one wants to take responsibility, so the finger is pointed at “the company” instead of individual people who work at the company. No one person wants to take responsibility of things like property, taxes, and expenses, so this is all put on “the company.” There are responsibilities that “the company” has that I understand a single person should not be responsible for. It does not make sense for the physical property of “the company” to be tied to a single human. However, since “the company” is given these human-like abilities people start to think of it as a real person, and we start to give this person rights it really does not need. One particular right I do not think is fair is the ability for a company to back a presidential candidate. That means that “the company” is speaking for all the people who work there. The money that those people worked hard for is being used to back a candidate that they may not actually support. The beliefs of a few chairmen should not be put on the people of the entire company. If those people want to give their own money, great! But money should not be given under the name of an entire corporation if the entire corporation does not necessarily agree.
I think what sony did with the rootkit was unethical. They should not have the ability to download software to someone’s computer without that person knowing it is being installed. Upon reading more about this software, I discovered it continuously uses CPU on the computer, and it opened up malware vulnerabilities. Sony installed software, made the computers vulnerable, and took up precious space, all without the user’s knowledge or approval. In one of the articles about Sony, after discussing what one of the presidents at Sony said, they said “Even Sony’s apology…” This seems wrong to me because the company is not what it is apologizing. It is the people within the company who made this decision that should be doing the apologizing. Sony paid money in lawsuits for their actions, but were the individuals that started the problem punished? “The company” was punished, but the individuals responsible did not have to be held accountable. This allows people to hide behind the “person” that is “the company.”
If corporations are afforded rights like a person, they should also be ethical and moral. That means the real people behind “the company’s” choices need to be ethical and moral. “The company” cannot make decisions or do things. The people behind “the company” should not be able to hide behind “the company’s” name to make decisions they might not make as an individual. People should be held responsible for their actions, not an invisible “person” that goes by the name of the company. In the case of Sony, people made the decision to install this software on people’s computers, they made the decision to cloak what they were doing, they made the decision to create the software in the first place. People made these decisions and should be responsible. When you blame something on a company, the individuals who made the decisions get away free of blame, and free of discipline.