Just when you
thought it was safe to get back into the water … there’s this, the Electoral
Commission deciding to waste more time and more money appealing last month’s High
Court ruling on Planet Key (see here).
MEDIA RELEASE
Monday 4 May, 2015
'PLANET KEY' ARTISTS PROTEST APPEAL
Wellington musician Darren Watson has
re-released his controversial 'Planet Key' single on iTunes and at
amplifier.co.nz. The songwriter made this decision after hearing that the
Electoral Commission intends to appeal the recent landmark High Court ruling in
favour of Watson and video maker Jeremy Jones.
The Commission has said the “appeal is
limited to questions of law” and it was “not seeking to challenge the findings
in the [Planet Key] decision as they applied to the particular facts in that
case.” However, Watson and Jones say that if any part of the ruling is
overturned the effect on their work, and potentially for all other artists in
New Zealand, will be to essentially silence political comment.
All royalties from Planet Key sales from
May 4th will go to the Red Cross' Nepal earthquake appeal fund.
“The more folks buy it the more we can
hopefully send a message that freedom of expression always prevails when it
comes to an individual's comments, songs, writing, and actually all kinds of
art” says Watson, “it's ridiculous that we STILL have to fight for this!”
The single is available here.
The Electoral Commission says there is an
inconsistency between the ruling of Justice Mander in the Electoral Commission
vs Greenpeace last year and Justice Clifford's decision in the Planet Key case.
Jeremy Jones says the cases are completely
different. “I reckon it's common sense that the Greenpeace ruling re:
'advertisements' can still apply to political groups and the like … we're just
a person who made a song, and a person who made a music video. We're not a
political 'third party'.”
Jones has made the music video available to
watch again from his Vimeo page, http://vimeo.com/102441715 but he hopes people
will also buy the single to support both earthquake recovery and the principle
of artistic freedom in New Zealand.
All paid downloads count toward the song's
chart position. When Watson pulled Planet Key from sale in August to avoid
potential prosecution it had reached #5 in the Official NZ Top 20 in a little
over two weeks with almost no commercial airplay.
Release Ends
And so it turns
out that there’s always some things in life destined to end badly (love being
one certainty, and arguing with blinkered bureaucrats often being another).
When one side becomes so entrenched in its position you just know it’s going to
drag on until they’ve squeezed the life out of it. When one side refuses to let
go and becomes blind to the overwhelming weight of facts in the matter. Even when
every man and every last rabid canine in the world can see the bloody obvious …
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