-- PRESS RELEASE - IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Pirate Party takes issue with Piratical new Pro-TPP Website

The Pirate Party of New Zealand is concerned and has complained over the contents of the tradeworks.org.nz website. The website has ostensibly been set up by the few organisations that think they stand to gain from the Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement, and has used imagery and text which impinges on the intellectual property of the Pirate Party and its International organization.

The use of a masted sailing ship is the most glaring example of the satirical nature of this website and one of our main grounds for offence. The Pirate Ship and all its related depictions are clearly intellectual property of the Pirate Party or at least if not the Party then The Pirate Bay which the Party shares a mutual affinity with for a free and open internet. In these heady days of lawsuits over patents for rounded corners we can not stand by on the decks of the internet and allow these cannon shots to go unanswered!

Furthermore as a political party, it is up to us and other political parties to make blusterous calls about 'more jobs'. These are well known trademark statements from politicians. Were the statements supplied displayed with the factual basis for their existence we would be happy to let this pass, unfortunately with no solid evidence, the 'more jobs' claim can only legally be made by politicians. The Advertising Standards Authority clearly states that only politicians and their parties are allowed to advertise 'More Jobs' and then not deliver and have no plan for doing so. We see the Tradeworks website and by extension, its creators, the TPP negotiators, as breaching NZ's advertising standards.

The section on 'Myths about TPP' (sic) then goes on to display peoples fears about the agreement but the accompanying text does nothing to dispel the 'myths'. This sort of wishy washy policy is once again the hallmark intellectual property of politicians. The page also shows a man flying with a jetpack, no information has been released (at all about anything really) about these jetpacks and how people will receive them.

Due to the unwarranted secrecy and lack of any real explanation of anything, and the use of Pirate Ships and happy brightly coloured cartoonish design, we demand the site be taken down, or at least filled with real relevant information OR made to look more like the websites of the businesses supporting it, which we have figured out are anything to do with meat, beef, lamb, dairy, other types of meat and wood.

This press release may be more ludicrous than the TPP itself, but we won't know until it's too late. 'May satire rule the high seas and help defeat the TPP!'

P.S. The Pirate Party also thinks the picture of the container ship on the front page is in bad taste so quickly after NZ's worst environmental
disaster of the RENA crash, j/s.

Max Coyle Communications Manager The Pirate Party of New Zealand
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