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2021/07/31 02:22:27
Subject: If the Emperor had a Text to speech device on indefinite hiatus
While the protests over shutting the animation channels has definitely reached some big names like Valrak, people's general unwillingness to understand the situation means they can flail around with videos and online petitions all the want, nothing will change. And I also don't look for GW to put out any sort of statement on the matter as all that will do is add fuel to the fire.
Every fan I've seen complaining about this shows a simple (non-legal, non-technical, non-business) understanding of the situation at best, and I don't say that to diminish them, but rather to note GW's actions all stem from legal, technical, and business facts and pressures. The problem even with a big boycott movement is that GW's not taking these actions as some personal caprice, they can't let people use their IPs in this way now, no matter what. Even if GW had to find some way to break the boycott and appease fans, the answer still couldn't be 'change their minds and let these animators keep their operations going.'
As I mentioned earlier I am interested to see if there is indeed a huge backlash, as the animation sub-community for 40K is something I barely knew even existed before now.
2021/07/31 03:17:49
Subject: If the Emperor had a Text to speech device on indefinite hiatus
GW's actions all stem from legal, technical, and business facts and pressures. The problem even with a big boycott movement is that GW's not taking these actions as some personal caprice,
They have a history of doing just this. Some of the testimony during the CHS was hyperbolic, and difficult to take from a company built on ripoffs from other ideas.
It also put me in mind of this, I was just going to quote the pertinent bits (it was written in the aftermath of the CHS verdict and IIRC the worst year of their slump prior to Rountree taking over) but it's too good not to take another read of for those who have forgotten or not seen it.
Tom Kirby addressing GW's Shareholders wrote:Games Workshop has had a really good year.
If your measure of 'good' is the current financial year's numbers, you may not agree. But if your measure is the long-term
survivability of a great cash generating business that still has a lot of potential growth, then you will agree.
Having taken on the conversion of our stores to a one man format with all the concomitant complexity of staff changes and new
sites and new lease negotiations – a long job not quite finished – we decided to re-arrange the management of our sales channels
from a country-based system to a central one. This meant removing four european headquarters, consolidating all trade (third
party) sales personnel at our Nottingham base, creating a new continental european grouping of our retail stores, and recruiting
new management for these divisions whilst flattening the structure by removing all middle management. At the same time we
changed leadership of our retail chain in the north american area, and gave birth to our new web store after many months’ labour.
All this has significantly de-risked the business. We have far fewer key personnel to replace if need be, and a much lower cost base
(£2 million p.a. less). It has cost, in total, around £4.5 million to accomplish. The new web store allows us to sell online more
efficiently. It cost around £4 million.
This augurs well for our long term health and cash flow.
What is really remarkable, however, is that it was all accomplished in five months. The levels of complexity handled by our 'back-
office' staff – personnel, IT and accounts – are beyond my descriptive abilities. And yet it was co-operatively done with precision,
efficiency and calmness at a ferocious speed.
We all owe these people a big vote of thanks. They have saved the company millions.
Working with people like this is why it is a pleasure to work here.
°
In the technological world we occupy there is constant debate over who 'innovates' and who merely copies. We have, this last year,
spent an indecent amount of your money trying to stop someone stealing our ideas and images. It is a very difficult thing to do
when it is done through a legal system designed to prevent people stealing hogs from one another. Our experience has probably
been typical of most – far too much money spent on far too little gain. The argument is that we have to do this or we will, bit by bit,
lose everything that we hold dear, everything that keeps the business going. Our crops will wither, our children will die piteous
deaths and the sun will be swept from the sky. But is it true?
Last year I published the secret that I believe is at the heart of what makes this business great. Steve Jobs once did the same over at
heavily litigating Apple. He said they ignored everything that did not lead to 'insanely great products' and that was what made them
great. None of the people Apple are suing are trying to do that, so why sue?
I said, ‘we recruit for attitude and not for skill’. It is what makes us great. It is those people who design the miniatures; those people
who make them and those people who sell them; those people who transformed our business systems in five short months. I have
been deluged with two comments about that statement, neither of which was: 'you fool, you just gave away the crown jewels'.
Why doesn't everyone do it? Ask them.
°
Because no one seems able to grasp the essential simplicity of what we do there has always been the search for the Achilles heel,
the one thing that Kirby and his cronies have overlooked. These are legion. I run through the list from time to time when someone
says that computer games will be the death of us – they are so much more realistic now! – again. This year it is 3-D printing. Pretty
soon everyone will be printing their own miniatures and where will we be then, eh?
We know quite a lot about 3-D printers, having been at the forefront of the technology for many years. We know of what we speak.
One day 3-D printers will be affordable (agreed), they are now, they will be able to produce fantastic detail (the affordable ones
won't) and they will do it faster than one miniature per day (no, they won't, look it up). So we may get to the time when someone
can make a poorly detailed miniature at home and have enough for an army in less than a year. That pre-supposes that 3-D
scanning technology will be affordable and good enough (don't bet the mortgage on that one) and that everyone will be happy to
have nothing but copies of old miniatures.
All of our great new miniatures come from Citadel. It is possible that one day we will sell them direct via 3-D printers to grateful
hobbyists around the world. That will not happen in the next few years (or, in City-speak, 'forever') but if and when it does it will
just mean that we can cut yet more cost out of the supply chain and be making good margins selling Citadel 3-D printers.
At the heart of the delusion is the notion that designing and making miniatures is easy. It isn't.
We find comfort among those who agree with us - growth among those who don't. - Frank Howard Clark
The wise man doubts often, and changes his mind; the fool is obstinate, and doubts not; he knows all things but his own ignorance.
The correct statement of individual rights is that everyone has the right to an opinion, but crucially, that opinion can be roundly ignored and even made fun of, particularly if it is demonstrably nonsense!” Professor Brian Cox
frankelee wrote: While the protests over shutting the animation channels has definitely reached some big names like Valrak, people's general unwillingness to understand the situation means they can flail around with videos and online petitions all the want, nothing will change. And I also don't look for GW to put out any sort of statement on the matter as all that will do is add fuel to the fire.
Every fan I've seen complaining about this shows a simple (non-legal, non-technical, non-business) understanding of the situation at best, and I don't say that to diminish them, but rather to note GW's actions all stem from legal, technical, and business facts and pressures. The problem even with a big boycott movement is that GW's not taking these actions as some personal caprice, they can't let people use their IPs in this way now, no matter what. Even if GW had to find some way to break the boycott and appease fans, the answer still couldn't be 'change their minds and let these animators keep their operations going.'
As I mentioned earlier I am interested to see if there is indeed a huge backlash, as the animation sub-community for 40K is something I barely knew even existed before now.
And yet GW let them do it for years and years, and not only did the sky not fall, but GW did better than they've ever done before.
But I'm sure anybody who challenges your supposedly superior understanding is just simple. That's very convincing. Not quite as convincing as the guy who stopped by just to tell everyone they were wrong and didn't understand how anything worked, but we can't all be that legendarily persuasive.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2021/07/31 03:19:31
Wha-Mu-077 wrote: But GW IS evil. They barely pay their employees, and keep driving the already absurd prices higher and higher so the higher-ups can pocket ever-absurder amounts of cash on each sale. They make day one DLCs for their already hideously overpriced, terribly written, misspelled, terribly balanced books that are going to be outdated in weeks due to the flood of FAQs and error fixing, because their playtesters probably haven't even seen them once before they went to print. They routinely ignore vast swathes of their community and their wishes. They wield their IP like a battleaxe, making extremely thinly-veiled threats at content creators. They routinely underproduce and exploit underhanded tactics to sell as much as they can. They routinely blatantly lie straight to the face of their entire fanbase. How blind can you be?
Dude, you can’t say that. The IP policy strictly forbids fan sites from speaking badly of GW.
2021/07/31 06:12:44
Subject: If the Emperor had a Text to speech device on indefinite hiatus
GW is hiding their vindicare assassin somewhere taking aim at new fan contents and no talented creator would want to waste their time and effort to test it out if that was a bluff.
Although I reckon if your stuff fall under the radar (under 10k view, not uploaded on youtube, annonymous creator), it is unlikely to get a strike.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2021/07/31 06:16:42
2021/07/31 06:58:22
Subject: Re:If the Emperor had a Text to speech device on indefinite hiatus
This year it is 3-D printing. Pretty soon everyone will be printing their own miniatures and where will we be then, eh?
We know quite a lot about 3-D printers, having been at the forefront of the technology for many years. We know of what we speak. One day 3-D printers will be affordable (agreed), they are now, they will be able to produce fantastic detail (the affordable ones won't) and they will do it faster than one miniature per day (no, they won't, look it up). So we may get to the time when someone can make a poorly detailed miniature at home and have enough for an army in less than a year. That pre-supposes that 3-D scanning technology will be affordable and good enough (don't bet the mortgage on that one) and that everyone will be happy to have nothing but copies of old miniatures.
Oh my. I see he was right on the money on this one ^^. All this paragraph is nothing but the naked truth xDDD
This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2021/07/31 06:59:38
BrianDavion wrote: I imagine that anything on WH+ will be subject to a high degree of quality control, given anything they put out will be offical and canon
You can't be serious. This is the company that produced the Ultramarines movie and published C.S. Goto's guro fanfics.
by quality control I mean in the corperate sense, IE "executive meddling" I shoulda put quotes around it I, assuming my meaning was obvious
Opinions are not facts please don't confuse the two
2021/07/31 09:46:54
Subject: If the Emperor had a Text to speech device on indefinite hiatus
Full Warning, contains a single use of a slur (against the creators of the animation by themselves), and a written swear word. Mods remove if warranted.
This hits a nerve with me because my name is steve...
Casual gaming, mostly solo-coop these days.
2021/07/31 11:43:10
Subject: If the Emperor had a Text to speech device on indefinite hiatus
frankelee wrote: While the protests over shutting the animation channels has definitely reached some big names like Valrak, people's general unwillingness to understand the situation means they can flail around with videos and online petitions all the want, nothing will change. And I also don't look for GW to put out any sort of statement on the matter as all that will do is add fuel to the fire.
Every fan I've seen complaining about this shows a simple (non-legal, non-technical, non-business) understanding of the situation at best, and I don't say that to diminish them, but rather to note GW's actions all stem from legal, technical, and business facts and pressures. The problem even with a big boycott movement is that GW's not taking these actions as some personal caprice, they can't let people use their IPs in this way now, no matter what. Even if GW had to find some way to break the boycott and appease fans, the answer still couldn't be 'change their minds and let these animators keep their operations going.'
As I mentioned earlier I am interested to see if there is indeed a huge backlash, as the animation sub-community for 40K is something I barely knew even existed before now.
And yet GW let them do it for years and years, and not only did the sky not fall, but GW did better than they've ever done before.
But I'm sure anybody who challenges your supposedly superior understanding is just simple. That's very convincing. Not quite as convincing as the guy who stopped by just to tell everyone they were wrong and didn't understand how anything worked, but we can't all be that legendarily persuasive.
You come here to persuade people? I couldn't care less, I just like filling computer down time with idle discussion. And yes, their understanding of it is simple, they go on about the situation in a sort of "colloquial" way, as if legal matters for big companies were the same as working out an issue between neighbors. Take your comment that they've let the animations go for years and the sky didn't fall. Nice, simple, farm logic to it. Wouldn't work in court, wouldn't work in a board room. My point was and is, all the angry consumers are on a different level of reality than Games Workshop is. But stop buying their products, I don't mind, I have.
This year it is 3-D printing. Pretty soon everyone will be printing their own miniatures and where will we be then, eh?
We know quite a lot about 3-D printers, having been at the forefront of the technology for many years. We know of what we speak. One day 3-D printers will be affordable (agreed), they are now, they will be able to produce fantastic detail (the affordable ones won't) and they will do it faster than one miniature per day (no, they won't, look it up). So we may get to the time when someone can make a poorly detailed miniature at home and have enough for an army in less than a year. That pre-supposes that 3-D scanning technology will be affordable and good enough (don't bet the mortgage on that one) and that everyone will be happy to have nothing but copies of old miniatures.
Oh my. I see he was right on the money on this one ^^. All this paragraph is nothing but the naked truth xDDD
Tom Kirby really comes off like a true idiot. And I liked how he tried to blame the legal system and other people in the company for their failures in court, as if it wasn't at his direction they were abusively litigious.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2021/07/31 11:48:16
2021/07/31 12:00:02
Subject: If the Emperor had a Text to speech device on indefinite hiatus
Am sad to see it go like this but it's totally understandable to me. I remember in the 90s "fan works" meant stuff people did for fun in their spare time, and when companies went after it, they were rightly castigated for that.
But now there is YouTube ad revenue and Patreon. This thread started with someone for whom those are his primary sources of income. He literally bemoans in the video that he's going to have to get a part-time job now. And I do feel bad for him.
But he's not a fan creator any more is he? He's a professional animator. He must be because he's getting paid for it and that's his primary income source.
What is the fundamental difference between him and say Creative Assembly making the Total War Warhammer games? Why should they need a license but he doesn't? The size of the operation? And what size do we draw the line? If people can make content in the universe and get paid for it, why should anyone buy a license to do that?
From a more general perspective, I disagree with the whole notion of protecting fictional universes in this way. I think people should outright be able to make their own Harry Potter or Star Wars stuff, use those characters, play in those universes. That's my personal belief. But it's not how the world works by a long shot, and so GW's actions don't seem unreasonable to me.
Sarouan wrote: Important information from the video, though : GW has actually done nothing to the channel nor contacted the creator, and the creator hasn't contacted GW either.
He decided to do that on his own. He simply read the updated rules on GW's website and gave up. That's it.
I watched the full video and I don't really understand why it's so long just for that...oh, right. It's a youtube video.
Predictable how people are immediately raging about GW while GW...did nothing to him specifically. That guy is solely the only one responsible of his decision, here.
To be quite honest, that alone is a statement to how vague and threatening their IP rule changes are.
They are worded in such a way that creators simply don't feel safe, whether they're doing fan animations, parody, stickers etc for hobby streams or whatever.
IT's back to the draconian levels where GW literally sued Spot the Space Marine and tried to claim the words 'Space Marine'. Which went embarassingly awry for them as Starship Troopers was probably the first use of the term and it's also been used in the Alien franchise so I'm very much wondering how much GW would like to fight against those franchises - answer: not a lot.
The concern is that GW will once again resort to bully tactics, forcing smaller creators etc, into submission through sheer size and pressure. This is what happened to TTS - they decided to -not- take the risk despite effectively being protected by fair use laws regarding parody.
2021/07/31 12:20:24
Subject: If the Emperor had a Text to speech device on indefinite hiatus
deano2099 wrote: I remember in the 90s "fan works" meant stuff people did for fun in their spare time.
It's called progress. You couldn't just pick up a free engine, mess around with it and make a working playable computer game before either, but now you can.
The level of engagement people could get into with anything grown more and more, there was time when you couldn't buy paints and had to grind them in a workshop slaving off for a master, now you can make anything you want and share with a few button clicks. There were little animation assist tools before and animators did everything by hand, now there are.
Some studios react to this differently, TIE Fighter has 12 mln views, you can watch it for free; partly because Star Wars is now so big and ingrained into culture it's hard for one person to hold it in a cage forever.
Time to begin selling licenses for fanart and animation and then stream best stuff made by fans monthly on your social media and YouTube channel.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2021/07/31 12:21:57
DarkStarSabre wrote: IT's back to the draconian levels where GW literally sued Spot the Space Marine and tried to claim the words 'Space Marine'. Which went embarassingly awry for them as Starship Troopers was probably the first use of the term and it's also been used in the Alien franchise so I'm very much wondering how much GW would like to fight against those franchises - answer: not a lot.
IIRC they didn't sue them: GW 'owns' "Space Marine" for video games & electronic entertainment and when Spots the Space Marine was first published as an eBook (it was released in print years before without issue) there was a question over whether it infringed, which it didn't (I can't remember if it was taken off-sale by an Amazon bot or GW asked them to while it was being sorted out).
frankelee wrote: Tom Kirby really comes off like a true idiot. And I liked how he tried to blame the legal system and other people in the company for their failures in court, as if it wasn't at his direction they were abusively litigious.
I love the one where he disparaged Pokémon as some long forgotten game.
2021/07/31 12:34:36
Subject: If the Emperor had a Text to speech device on indefinite hiatus
frankelee wrote: Tom Kirby really comes off like a true idiot. And I liked how he tried to blame the legal system and other people in the company for their failures in court, as if it wasn't at his direction they were abusively litigious.
I love the one where he disparaged Pokémon as some long forgotten game.
And taught many a wargamer what "otiose" means.
Games Workshop Delenda Est.
Users on ignore- 53.
If you break apart my or anyone else's posts line by line I will not read them.
2021/07/31 13:12:10
Subject: If the Emperor had a Text to speech device on indefinite hiatus
I hadn't heard of this show before. I went and watched a few episodes. It's not exactly great. The first video I watched was the intro to 40k but it was literally GW art, minimal animation and a straight copy of the bit at the beginning of 40k rulebooks.
I then watched a couple of 'parody' videos and the comedy such as it is seems to come from the fact that the emperor swears a lot. Is this the creativity that we are bemoaning the loss of.
Then I learnt that this Youtuber has a patron that earns 180,000 a year.
That's probably more than any blacklibrary writer makes at a fraction of the quality.
Finally we have the fact that despite making a considerable amount of money, literally more than a million pounds, GW hasn't actually done a thing to this Youtuber.
The salary issue is a genuine problem that I find extremely troubling, but this is nothing.
The policy used to be "we're cool with fan animations provided you don't make money".
Between Patreon and potentially Youtube monetization, TTS is definitely not in the "don't make money" category, though. I'm not a lawyer, but I imagine it'd be hard to pass it all under fair use if it's someone's main source of income (I don't know if it actually is, but it looks like it).
Maybe GW would have agreed to sell a license to the TTS team, but we'll never know if they don't even ask...
In the video, he directly refers to having to potentially get a part time (or even full time) job to supplement lost TTS income if the Patron donations take a dip.
The policy used to be "we're cool with fan animations provided you don't make money".
Between Patreon and potentially Youtube monetization, TTS is definitely not in the "don't make money" category, though. I'm not a lawyer, but I imagine it'd be hard to pass it all under fair use if it's someone's main source of income (I don't know if it actually is, but it looks like it).
Maybe GW would have agreed to sell a license to the TTS team, but we'll never know if they don't even ask...
In the video, he directly refers to having to potentially get a part time (or even full time) job to supplement lost TTS income if the Patron donations take a dip.
Their patreon earns more than 5 times the average UK salary and there's YouTube income on top of that. If they've been flushing that money down the toilet for the last 8 years, I don't have much sympathy.
2021/07/31 14:03:34
Subject: If the Emperor had a Text to speech device on indefinite hiatus
deano2099 wrote: From a more general perspective, I disagree with the whole notion of protecting fictional universes in this way. I think people should outright be able to make their own Harry Potter or Star Wars stuff, use those characters, play in those universes. That's my personal belief. But it's not how the world works by a long shot, and so GW's actions don't seem unreasonable to me.
The problem is that you can't properly tailor the law to protect some IP but not some other. Imagine if the situation was reversed: some guy writes a novel that sells just enough copies to earn him a living, then some major entertainment company picks up that universe, makes it into a franchise raking in billions but doesn't pay the original author a single cent. Does that sound fair? At what point can you say that a fictional universe is big enough that it doesn't need to be protected anymore? There's no good answer to that question.
At its current rate, Alfabusa's patreon brings in over 200k$ per year. Sure, it's not much compared to GW's yearly income but it's more than enough to consider it a legitimate business. Note that this isn't an attack on Alfa. I don't care about GW's bottom line and I can admire someone making money from his own creative project like that. But the idea of the big bad company bullying the innocent fan doing stuff for free in his spare time is simply untrue. The situation is that of a small business making money from a much bigger's business work; if we were talking about physical products rather than IP, that would likely be called counterfeiting.
Chikout wrote: Their patreon earns more than 5 times the average UK salary and there's YouTube income on top of that. If they've been flushing that money down the toilet for the last 8 years, I don't have much sympathy.
I see we're at counting others money stage. People sell things majority here would consider random garbage at cost of tens and hundreds of thousands of euros at art exhibitions, but guy making a silly parody getting stream of cash from fans is "troubling".
I am not the biggest fan of TTS since I'm not much into marines and all the horus stuff, but if he managed to get so popular, he earned every penny.
The policy used to be "we're cool with fan animations provided you don't make money".
Between Patreon and potentially Youtube monetization, TTS is definitely not in the "don't make money" category, though. I'm not a lawyer, but I imagine it'd be hard to pass it all under fair use if it's someone's main source of income (I don't know if it actually is, but it looks like it).
Maybe GW would have agreed to sell a license to the TTS team, but we'll never know if they don't even ask...
In the video, he directly refers to having to potentially get a part time (or even full time) job to supplement lost TTS income if the Patron donations take a dip.
Their patreon earns more than 5 times the average UK salary and there's YouTube income on top of that. If they've been flushing that money down the toilet for the last 8 years, I don't have much sympathy.
It should be noted that all that money doesn't go directly to Alfabusa. Patreon takes a cut, and then the funds are used to pay all the people who work on the videos: script-writers, voiceworkers, audio-editors, etc.
If he needs to get another job to supplement lost Patreon income, then the divvied up amounts aren't exactly that much. It also means that all of the people who were getting paid from the projects are also affected.
Going by the credits, it looks like there's at least 15-20 individuals all providing content for the project. It's not likely that they're all getting paid the same amount, but even so, that's a lot of ways to split the Patreon funds.
Chikout wrote: Their patreon earns more than 5 times the average UK salary and there's YouTube income on top of that. If they've been flushing that money down the toilet for the last 8 years, I don't have much sympathy.
I see we're at counting others money stage. People sell things majority here would consider random garbage at cost of tens and hundreds of thousands of euros at art exhibitions, but guy making a silly parody getting stream of cash from fans is "troubling".
I am not the biggest fan of TTS since I'm not much into marines and all the horus stuff, but if he managed to get so popular, he earned every penny.
You're misquoting me. I said GW paying low wages was troubling.
I don't begrudge them making the money they did, but painting themselves as the little guy when they earn substantially more than most people is a little unnecessary.
2021/07/31 14:22:37
Subject: If the Emperor had a Text to speech device on indefinite hiatus
Plant wrote: For everyone who is joining the boycott, can you please keep it up until I get a copy of the new kill team?
Or at least boycott the Ork terrain for me!
"Sometimes the only victory possible is to keep your opponent from winning." - The Emperor, from The Outcast Dead.
"Tell your gods we are coming for them, and that their realms will burn as ours did." -Thostos Bladestorm
To be quite honest, that alone is a statement to how vague and threatening their IP rule changes are.
They didn’t change IP rules. IP law only gets changed by governments, not businesses. GW have had the same IP rights for years, and will have the same rights even if they delete their website tomorrow. Other businesses (patreon and YT income = you’re a business) have always been under the potential of a C&D or other legal proceedings.
2021/07/31 14:37:16
Subject: If the Emperor had a Text to speech device on indefinite hiatus
The boycott is what it is. People will spend their hobby dollar (or insert local currency here) on whatever they want. I don't see any point belittling those that either do or do not support it. Will it make a difference? I doubt it, but time will tell. The thing is the practices that some people find troubling at GW, with the exception of being the dominant force in the industry issues, will undoubtedly be being repeated at other places as well. As with most social media driven campaigns this will all probably be forgotten in a matter of weeks.
ListenToMeWarriors wrote: The boycott is what it is. People will spend their hobby dollar (or insert local currency here) on whatever they want. I don't see any point belittling those that either do or do not support it. Will it make a difference? I doubt it, but time will tell. The thing is the practices that some people find troubling at GW, with the exception of being the dominant force in the industry issues, will undoubtedly be being repeated at other places as well. As with most social media driven campaigns this will all probably be forgotten in a matter of weeks.
Pretty sure most of social media were already "boycotting" GW because they didn't renew the contract of some BL author a while ago. Unless they just said that for the likes/retweets/whatever, and then just carried on buying shiny toys.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2021/07/31 14:59:36
2021/07/31 15:04:05
Subject: If the Emperor had a Text to speech device on indefinite hiatus
If you're referring to Thomas Parrot that isn't what happened. He discussed 40k's fascism problem on Twitter and was fired because an "investor" complained about him having the discussion. It might have been in Parrot's contract that he couldn't badmouth GW but from what I read of said discussion GW wasn't mentioned. That the event came off the back of the "You Will Not Be Missed" thing was a contributing factor.
After being fired Parrot's marriage collapsed and then he disappeared off of social media and AFAIK hasn't been heard from since. GW isn't responsible for the last bit but there was intense discussion about whether or not the firing was legal/morally right and the "investor" part got a lot of people confused as to what exactly an "investor" was and how much power they had.
