http://www.adelaidenow.com.au/news/south-australia/adelaide-fitness-guru-freelee-the-banana-girl-accused-of-copying-deleting-rivals-in-war-for-lucrative-online-video-advertising/news-story/a99d572af5797ca3991e821a698fa4b6 wrote:BIKINI-CLAD, banana-loving social media celebrity Leanne Ratcliffe is at war again — this time with fellow vegans who claim she plagiarises their work and has her competitors deleted.
Ms Ratcliffe, better known as “Freelee the Banana Girl”, is at the centre of international drama in the highly-lucrative world of online health and animal rights videos.
Vegan bloggers claim the Adelaide-based fitness guru is having YouTube shut down rival sites by filing paperwork asserting her copyright has been infringed.
They say Ms Ratcliffe and her partner, Harley “Durianrider” Johnstone, want to dominate YouTube’s profitable advertising model by erasing their competition.
However, in a tearful video response, Ms Ratcliffe says her detractors simply want to “destroy” her.
“There are a--h---- out there who want to get me deleted ... yes, even vegans,” she says in one video.
“The ego of some people is so f---ing huge ... they don’t give a f--k about the animals, they give a f--k about their egos and destroying me.”
Ms Ratcliffe’s YouTube channel, which promotes raw eating and “high-carb vegan living” options, has more than 700,000 subscribers.
In 2015 she and Mr Johnstone were sued by Kayla Itsines, founder of the Bikini Body Guide, for defamation — the case was settled out of court.
Documents filed in the case asserted the pair were foul-mouthed parasites, highlighting Mr Johnstone’s claim he could retire on the advertising profits of “pimping” Ms Ratcliffe online.
The latest controversy was sparked by a video posted two weeks ago by Californian-based animal rights activists Danielle and Chelsea, known as the “Get Upset Girls”.
In it, they accuse Ms Ratcliffe — whom they had met at a vegan convention three months earlier — of using footage from one of their videos without credit.
“(At first) I was really confused and thought ‘maybe it’s a mistake’, (later) I felt sick to my stomach ... Freelee took nearly all of my video,” Danielle says in the clip.
“By stealing my content and posting it as her own, she has prevented anyone from seeing what I’m doing ... (she has) taken away the rights of an activist.”
At the same time, other users accused Ms Ratcliffe and Mr Johnstone of filing copyright infringement notices with YouTube to have their sites shut down.
They claim recently-deleted channel “The Vegan Cheetah” was wiped following a complaint by the couple, and had more subscribers than either Ms Ratcliffe or Mr Johnstone.
Ms Ratcliffe, however, claims she is the victim of baseless copyright notifications and that her site is the one at risk of being deleted.
“We are on the edge ... (people should) have a purpose greater than your ego,” she says.
Neither she nor Mr Johnstone responded to The Advertiser’s request for comment before deadline.
