16 by the President of the Republic at the time and his Ministers, they decided to retain the same critical position towards the government. B.3. Conclusion 54. In the case of Cantos v. Argentina, the Inter-American Court determined what the inter-American system should understand as “victim” when the rights of natural persons and the rights of legal persons are in dispute. In the Cantos case, the Inter-American Court considered that: [I]n general, the rights and obligations attributed to legal persons are decided in rights and obligations of the physical persons that constitute them or who act on their behalf or representing them. In addition, it pointed out that “although the device of legal persons has not been expressly recognized in the American Convention, as it has in Protocol No. 1 to the European Convention on Human Rights, this does not restrict the possibility that, in certain circumstances, an individual may have recourse to the inter-American system for the protection of human rights to assert his fundamental rights, even when these are covered by a legal fiction or device created by the legal system itself”75 (bold added). 55. In this case, the possibility of shareholders to have recourse to the inter-American system when their rights are affected is not in dispute, because the Inter-American Court has recognized that shareholders have rights that may be protected by the Pact of San José. The considerations in the case of Cantos v. Argentina reveal that the rights that are being exercised by the legal persons are merely the rights of the natural persons who compose them. In other words, all those shareholders who consider that their rights have been violated may have recourse to the inter-American system to realize their rights that are protected by the American Convention. Thus, the Inter-American Court considered that: The law offers the individual a wide range of alternative to regulate his relations with other individuals and to limit his responsibility. Thus, there are partnership companies, limited liability companies, joint-stock companies, limited partnerships, etc. At any event, this organized association permits the coordination of individual forces to achieve a higher common purpose76 (bold added). 56. In the instant case, this “higher common purpose,” which includes all the shareholders, results in the capacity of the media outlet to provide information to Venezuelan society. Refusing to recognize the right of some shareholders as victims means that this common purpose is fragmented because it leads to an illogical conclusion regarding which shareholders to protect and which not to protect. In the case of legal persons, it is each and every one of the individual strengths that create an organized and coordinated aggregation to carry out a common purpose, which is the communications activity of RCTV. 57. Rather than asserting the status of victims of the shareholders in its case law in the context of the right to freedom of expression, what the majority opinion does is create two distinct categories of shareholders: those who participate in the decision-making mechanisms of a media outlet and those who do not. This categorization of what should be understood by “victims” in the television and radio media evidently has an impact on the violation of the right to freedom of expression, because it results in those shareholders who voluntarily provided their own assets and resources and form part of a media company, sharing and defending its communications project, but who are not part of the board of directors of the 75 Case of Cantos v. Argentina, paras. 27 and 29. 76 Case of Cantos v. Argentina, para. 26.