# Rights-Bearing Computational Subject
**Domain:** Digital Afterlife / Personhood / Rights
**Doc Type:** Canonical Concept
**Maturity:** Developed
**Evidence / Concept Status:** Future legal category / corpus synthesis
## Definition
A **Rights-Bearing Computational Subject** is an executable computational entity to which law attaches interests, standing, protections, duties, or service claims because of its capacities, lineage, relationships, or moral status.
## Continuity Significance
This is the frontier object the digital-afterlife architecture ultimately must distinguish from data, property, and representation.
## Existing Architecture / Evidence
AI legal-personhood scholarship, post-biological personhood theory, and continuity-rights work explore adjacent possibilities.
## Evidentiary Boundary / Red-Team Note
No current law generally recognizes human-derived computational continuants as natural persons.
## Related Ontology
[[wiki/Post-Biological Personhood|Post-Biological Personhood]] · [[wiki/Reconstructed Person|Reconstructed Person]] · [[wiki/Successor Standing|Successor Standing]] · [[wiki/Digital Replica to Rights-Bearing Subject|Digital Replica to Rights-Bearing Subject]] · [[wiki/Dual Constitution of AI|Dual Constitution of AI]]
## Simple Reminders, Quotations, and Thoughts
> "If humans show real machine-like intelligence, do they deserve to be treated like machines?"
> **— Chris DiBona**, *2015, Edge annual question “What Do You Think About Machines That Think?”*
[[reminders/Identity/Should Humans With Machine Intelligence Be Treated Like Machines by Chris DiBona|Should Humans With Machine Intelligence Be Treated Like Machines by Chris DiBona]]