Already we can see how the rulebook is enforcing intimidation and silencing of diverse Play styles that respect Corruption but allow one or two murders as thematically fitting. Why is the rulebook pushing this extremist intolerant view of in-game NPC murder? Why is there zero-compromise on allowing a Player one Corruption-free murder in a game session? Will 7th Sea rules burn down if one NPC murder happens in a session? No, the rules are resilient enough to survive one murder per game, but designers are pushing a Pacifist Political agenda.
I do not have the rulebook on me now, but I can quote another passage where the rules seem written to make certain Players feel UNWELCOME at a 7th Sea table run by a Purtan GM. Why is that?
You heard of institutionalized bias and prejudice? When rules deliberately take an extremist position with regards to morality inside a game world, those rules create an intolerant "shame culture" to dissuade certain Players from feeling comfortable at a 7th Sea table run by a Purist.
So let us talk Convention play. Let us say 4 strangers arrive at a table and 2 of them allow their Hero PCs to kill one or two NPCs (not wholesale slaughter so let us stop with they hyperbole). The other 2 Players are Pacifists. Very easy social situation for the experienced GM. That GM does not force the Pacifist players to kill and discourages the others from graphic narrations of violence and stops all wholesale slaughter but allows one or two murders to balance both Play styles. Bad Players can do bad things that do no involve killing. They can use threats of violence to force a whole group of Natives in The New World to row their ships for hours. That is not Heroic but it is not murder and is not torture, just forced labor, and the rules do not stop this.
With regards to the GM getting ownership. The rules give the GM power to steal another Player's character sheet. A Player who is polite at the table, respectful of fellow Players, but whose in-game Character murdered 6 brutes. The Power Dynamics are in the GMs favor as written making that GM an intolerant bully on a power trip. A Players only recourse is to be bullied away as an "Outsider" and hide away from the Puritan GM bully.