Tonight an election advertisement screened on TV3 on behalf of the ACT Party. It may have been screened elsewhere, but I only saw TV3.
It is not (at least yet) on the ACT website or on Youtube, so I can’t link to it here, but it features the iconic Green “Rangitoto Girl” image:
– but without the Party Vote Green message.
Instead, it refers to “watermelon Greens”, “bans” and “going to Australia” – Rangitoto Girl disappears, presumably in a hunt for a better-paid Aussie job.
The irony is that the ACT Party claims to be the party wanting to safeguard property rights. They even introduced a Bill into Parliament to enshrine private property rights in the NZ Bill of Rights Act.
But when it comes down to it, and there is political advantage involved, they have proved themselves to be hypocrites of the worst order.
They do not hold the intellectual property right to the “Rangitoto Girl” image. That belongs to the Green Party, the photographer, and the Green Party’s advertising agency.
Despite their purported concern for property rights, ACT have stolen our property.
Edit: Frog has now found the ACT advert on Youtube:
[Edit: It has now been pulled from Youtube, so don't bother trying to load the video]
2 November, 2008 at 5:28 am
Gee, is this complaint from the same party that created the neandrathal (sp?) mock up from the National billboard?
Or at least paraded the altered billboard on the frogblog (if they did not do the remake themselves).
Is this a Green “holier than thou” attitude?
2 November, 2008 at 7:12 am
If ACT put this advertisement out on TV3, then surely it must count towards their (strictly limited) entitlement to public broadcasting?
Does ACT have so little to say in favour of its own policies, that it chooses to squander such a limited resource (their broadcasting quota) on attacking other parties?
Why should anyone want to vote for ACT, if ACT doesn’t take the opportunity on TV to tell people what it stands for?
2 November, 2008 at 7:23 am
Gerrit, the Party Vote Neanderthal billboard was posted on this blog, not frogblog.
It was posted by me personally, not by the Green Party. I found it on the create your own billboard site that has many spoofs of National Party billboards (some of which are pro-National), thought it was funny and appropriate given Lockwood Smith’s and Maurice Williamson’s pronouncements, so put it on g.blog.
That site is quite happy for people to use the billboards from it elsewhere – in fact it encourages people link to link their own sites to them.
It is a big difference between that and a political party using in its own official advertising intellectual property that has been commissioned by another political party.
2 November, 2008 at 7:33 am
It’s a different girl!!!
2 November, 2008 at 8:32 am
Not to mention that G.Blog isn’t actually an advertising medium, so I’d expect that we’re actually covered by fair usage and parody laws. Given that a large part of this blog’s purpose is internal green communication between members, I think us having a laugh at National’s advertising strategy without actually trying to make our parodies public is fair enough.
If we put up our own interpretations of Act’s policies featuring their political branding, and then paid to publish that to people, not only would I be furious at the waste of money, I would be berating the Party for having broken an ethical window that needs careful guarding. As soon as you pay for it and start trying to use it to try and get votes or make financial gains, it’s no longer parody, and I would imagine the law would view it as intellectual property theft. Act, as a party with very extreme views on property rights, is certainly being highly inconsistent here.
As much as we want to debate our opponent’s weaknesses, we shouldn’t pretend to be our opponents in order to do it. That’s just strawmanning them. Which is exactly what that ad is- a vicious strawman attack on several issues that are not our policy, and cannot reasonably be inferred from our policies. We’ve covered before why we don’t want to tell you what showers to use, and several left-wing sites will tell you that emigration to Australia has stopped increasing since National and Act last left government.
2 November, 2008 at 8:34 am
It is indeed josh, but it is still a copyright infringement – not of the girl’s or the Green Party’s but of the agency’s copyright.
2 November, 2008 at 9:45 am
I think they’ve done it to get the completely false the greens want to tell you how many children to have soundbite out into the public, because they couldn’t do it any other way – not for lack of trying. They think it will reduce our vote so they’ll take the legal consequences later.
It won’t work though – if there’s any public discussion on this, their arguments will be shown up as specious and false, which is why they haven’t been pushed through official party releases or gained ground before. Thank goodness New Zealanders have zero tolerance for push-polling.
2 November, 2008 at 10:15 am
People saw it….its job is done…..diddums pinkos!
2 November, 2008 at 10:16 am
low, actoids, low.
2 November, 2008 at 10:28 am
Greens the party of hypocrisy by trying to win votes for the next generation while suggesting that next generaation shouldn’t ever exist so Gaia will be happy……scumbags.
2 November, 2008 at 10:34 am
That was United Future, not ACT.
2 November, 2008 at 11:10 am
Oops, just checked, and you’re right Graeme – my mistake.
All the same, ACT have stood up as the self-proclaimed party of property rights.
Any comments from you on the copyright issue – this is an area you have expertise in, is it not?
2 November, 2008 at 11:37 am
One: The only thing even remotely pink about the Green Party is our support for women’s movements, “diddums”.
Two: I’m glad people saw it. Not just because it’s outrageous and hypocritical, but also because they so badly misunderstood our advertising strategy. It’s not about the words we’re saying- those mostly impact people who’ve already decided. It’s about a straightforward visual message of associating our rivers, forests, and children with the Green Party. Which Act has kindly reinforced for us.
That’s not even taking into account the fact that they’ve let us set the agenda and put themselves onto the defensive. However ethically despicable this ad is, strategically speaking they’ve played right into our hands
2 November, 2008 at 1:21 pm
Yaeh right Ari…..you watermelons got a slap back and you can’t deal with it nor understand it at all.
People are waking up to your Stalinism by stealth undercover of a warm and fuzzy hippie exterior….and its just started comrade!
2 November, 2008 at 1:51 pm
Oh, James, if you can only trot out the tired old labels and are unable to put up any arguments to support them, why don’t you just go away (or at least back to the Kiwiblog comments section where you fit in quite well).
Anyway, here’s what Jeanette has to say on it.
2 November, 2008 at 5:31 pm
James – apologies to your mother, but you are the stupidist commenter I’ve ever read!
2 November, 2008 at 9:54 pm
Law generally; electoral law particularly; copyight, unfortunately not.
Sorry
3 November, 2008 at 7:44 am
Ah well Graeme, regardless of whether they’ve broken the law or not, they’ve certainly proved themselves to be hypocrites.
James- I honestly couldn’t name a thing about Stalin or his regime that I like. And generally my description is more along the lines of “nerd” than “hippy”.
And if you heard me laughing when I viewed that ad for the second time and realised their myriad of mistakes, you’d probably be changing your tune. Not to mention we’re polling consistently high. Of course, you can still continue to feel smug then, when there’s a real possibility of us forming a truly progressive coalition for once.
3 November, 2008 at 12:44 pm
Hate to point this out but… its a different girl, Rangitoto isn’t copyrighted, and the font is widely used. Apart from the concept (where copyright is dodgy at best, even worse when it comes to election campaigns) the ACT party haven’t done anything wrong here.
3 November, 2008 at 2:09 pm
Um, that’s not news theimagemaker. That was pointed out in the fourth comment on this thread.
The copyright attaches to the image, not to the girl, and it is clearly the same image with a different girl inserted. The copyright to that image belongs to the agency commissioned by the Green Party.
3 November, 2008 at 2:31 pm
Ouch!
I went to look at this, and youToob have pulled the link.
I guess I’ll just have to take the comments flame-roll as it stands… dammit!
I suspect the website has followed Toad’s understanding about the ownership/copyrighting of the concept & image of the advertising we (Green members) paid for.
That is all …
3 November, 2008 at 5:12 pm
Katie: It’s essentially a little girl who looks a bit like Aila, in the same clothes on the same background, lecturing New Zealanders on how we shouldn’t have more rules and regulations if we want to be clean and green. (I have no idea how Act thinks we’ll reverse our current trend of pollution and over-consumption, maybe through the second coming)
They run the tired old line of “if you try to implement your sensible progressive policies, I’ll emigrate to australia” at which point the only good idea about the whole ad is demonstrated when the little girl briefly disappears, before the announcer makes an appeal to National voters who hang out on kiwiblog by saying “vote real green, not watermelon green”. This shows you that Act really has no idea about how to recruit new voters from anywhere but the extreme right of National’s base.