TorrentFreak's Latest News

Former UFC Star Paige VanZant is Hunting Down Photo Pirates on DiscordAndy Maxwell, 26 Oct 11:20 AM After cutting her teeth in lower-profile promoti

Former UFC Star Paige VanZant is Hunting Down Photo Pirates on Discord Andy Maxwell, 26 Oct 11:20 AM After cutting her teeth in lower-profile promotions, MMA fighter Paige VanZant made her winning UFC debut in 2014. With subsequent 'Fight of the Night' and 'Performance of the Night' awards, she cemented herself as a fan favorite but with just two wins from her last six fights, '12 Gauge' eventually left the UFC. While VanZant continued to fight, athleticism and good looks opened up even greater opportunities for the former UFC fighter. In 2016, a series of impressive performances on Dancing With The Stars brought her into the mainstream and today she is reportedly making more by posting her racy images online than she ever did with the world's premier martial arts organization. VanZant Popular on Instagram, But Also PPV With around three million followers, VanZant is certainly making some decent returns from her Instagram account but she's not averse to posting some tasters online for free either. She is active on Reddit and often posts content to the MMABabes sub (NSFW). However, the self-proclaimed 'Professional Bad Ass and Model' also has her own site where fans can subscribe to all her glory for $9.99 per month. This pay-per-view model is certainly popular with some but of course, there are those who would prefer not to pay for the privilege. As a result, VanZant's images (that appear to be getting racier over time) are widely shared on social media without permission. She also has a keen following on Discord too but for people who posted content from her fansite to the platform, time could be running out. Paige Wants Personal Contact With Pirates At the time of writing, people who subscribe to VanZant's official site can get a range of perks, including a FaceTime meeting with the model and influencer. This type of contact is likely to be popular with fans but for those who are pirating her contact, VanZant has another type of personal attention in mind. On October 15, attorney Jason Fischer of Fischer Law, P.L. wrote to Discord informing the platform that unknown individuals had posted dozens of VanZant's copyrighted images and videos on the platform. These were reportedly culled from her official site and posted to Discord without permission. "It has come to the attention of Ms. Vanzant that copies of her copyrighted content have been reproduced and published on Discord," the notice to Discord reads. "This copyrighted material was captured from Ms. Vanzant's fan site (https://www.paigefanzant.com/) without permission and has similarly been reproduced and published on Discord without permission. Accordingly, we respectfully request that you remove the above-described copyrighted materials from your site/servers." While this would usually be the end of the matter, VanZant wasn't done. VanZant Goes to Court in the United States In an application filed at a California district court, VanZant's attorney explained that since her content had been posted to Discord without permission, she is entitled to access the identities of the Discord users responsible for infringing her copyrights. Listing more than 60 links to images and videos, the filing requests a DMCA subpoena compelling Discord to hand over the personal details of its allegedly infringing users. This information should include usernames/account names, real names, physical addresses, users' telephone numbers, email addresses, IP addresses, and billing information for all of these accounts. At this stage it is unclear what Ms. VanZant and her attorney intend to do with this information but for those who posted her content to Discord (and if they can be tracked down) there is likely to be no good news. The DMCA subpoena application can be found here (1,2,3 pdf) From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more. 'Free Download Manager' Removes YouTube Support After Google Complaint Ernesto Van der Sar, 25 Oct 09:57 PM With over a billion users YouTube is the largest video portal on the Internet. The service opens the door to a wealth of information and entertainment, including the latest and greatest music which can be streamed for free. Through YouTube, the music industry generated billions of dollars in advertising revenue. While this sounds great, YouTube also presents an indirect threat, as third-party tools allow people to rip and download music to enjoy outside of the streaming service. Stream-ripping Crackdown Over the past several years, major music labels have taken legal action against several stream-ripping services. YouTube-MP3 was shut down after a legal battle and 2Conv and FLVto may suffer the same fate. In addition, rightsholders are actively trying to remove these sites from Google's search results. YouTube isn't sitting still either. The company prohibits third-party services from downloading YouTube content and is actively blocking the IP addresses of known offenders. While YouTube itself hasn't taken any legal action, the company shut down a YouTube ripper through a WIPO domain name dispute a few months ago. Most of the enforcement activity of YouTube and its parent Google takes place outside of the limelight. However, there's plenty going on behind the scenes, as a recent issue at "Free Download Manager" (FDM) shows. 'Free Download Manager' Pulls YouTube Support FDM is a multi-purpose download tool that has been around since 2004. The software can optimize browser downloads and has a built-in BitTorrent client. It was also one of the first tools to add support for YouTube downloads back in 2007, but this functionality was abruptly removed a few days ago. There is no official announcement on FDM's website but, after reports started to trickle in at the forums, developer Alex confirmed that YouTube support was pulled intentionally. "We're sorry to say, YouTube downloads are not available for now. We are in progress of discussing this issue with Google," Alex writes, adding that FDM received a claim from Google and that the functionality has been "temporarily" removed until the issue is sorted. The question remains whether YouTube downloads will ever return to the tool, as YouTube makes it very clear that this isn't allowed anywhere in the world. While it's technically possible, it seems doubtful that FDM will get the green light from Google. YouTube References Disappear Too Also, FDM hasn't just removed the YouTube downloading functionality, it has also stripped the official site of YouTube references. This includes the 2007 blog post titled "FDM 2.3 BETA 6," where YouTube support was officially announced. The blog post itself remains online but the YouTube reference above is no longer present. And there is more. FDM's dedicated Youtube page now returns a 404 error. As Ghacks notes, this page was working just fine earlier. TorrentFreak reached out to FDM to find out more about the nature of Google's demands. A spokesperson informed us that the issue persists but didn't add any specifics regarding Google's complaint, or whether FDM faces 'potential' legal consequences. Warnings From YouTube's Legal Team Are Not New Over the years, YouTube's legal team has regularly approached operators of stream-ripping services with cease and desist notices. These warnings typically don't come with any concrete legal threats. Instead, they urge the recipients to comply with YouTube's Terms of Services and Developer Policies, which prohibit unauthorized downloading. Example of a Legal Warning (previously sent to another service) The warnings come with an ultimatum requiring the operators to comply. This strategy can be quite effective, as smaller sites are easily threatened and swiftly throw in the towel, but others continue regardless. We don't know whether FDM received such a threat but it's clear that, whatever the message was, it's serious enough for the developers to remove the YouTube stream-ripping functionality. For now… From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more. ©2021 TorrentFreak | Office 21338 PO Box 4336 Manchester, North West M61 0BW United Kingdom Web Version   Preferences   Forward   Unsubscribe     Powered by Mad Mimi®A GoDaddy® company