7 ms·

An attack against what? The sanctity of "their IP" that is itself the result of a massive copyright violation campaign?

zobzu 3mo ago
even if you disregard training costs, pure inference costs are a problem same reason other api have rate limit. this is an attack to bypass the rate limit.
- szszrk 3mo ago
  Still calling it an "attack" feels like a stretch. They literally had to pay for that "attack", no matter how many accounts they used. Google was killing many websites for decades with their crawlers. Most large websites decided to create dedicated infrastructure for their traffic alone. Somehow they didn't participate in that cost and were not called the attackers.
  - w0m 3mo ago
    > and were not called the attackers. This is the mental mental leaps I'm struggling with here. Did you not live through that era where they were explicitly and repeatedly called out as 'attacks'? They were generally tolerated/hardenee around as they provided value-in-discoverability.
    - munk-a 3mo ago
      Just to ensure you don't gaslight yourself - I did live through that era and I worked on and supported a niche community (a MUD) where we did a lot of work encouraging marketing and discoverability through MUD forums as well as making sure our page was accurately and minimally keyword tagged and highly available for indexers. In the time since that era search engines have transformed into platforms themselves that do engage in more parasitic behavior but it's important not to assume that the way it is now is how it always was - that's a rather defeatist path to walk down where you ignore awareness of the fact that there can be a highly profitable non-enshittified search engine that supports, rather than destroys, the ecosystem it benefits from. It was better and, if we're diligent, it can be better again.
    - achr2 3mo ago
      Ding. Ding. Ding. "Provided value to the content author". AI scrapping negatively impacts the content author with zero compensation. There is no mutual benefit.
    - szszrk 3mo ago
      True, I may have generalized too much. I did lived through that era. Outside of people actually working for those companies barely anyone known. For many of us (not working for US dotcoms and other big fish) this was a curiosity we learned fairly recently. Especially on "local" media, papers and socials, this discussion was completely missing. Even today. But now any AI brawl is almost mainstream.
  - abustamam 3mo ago
    > [Google] were not called the attackers. They should be. But as the saying goes, one website/company dying is a "tragedy," lots of them dying at the hands of one company is a statistic of corporate growth. Or something like that. And then of course when the tables turn on a company and they're the ones getting bombarded, they cry foul. Keep in mind Anthropic did many similar things that you mentioned Google did. I think the term "attack" here is appropriate but not in the way Anthropic is framing it. Alibaba is clearly violating terms to extract data, so that's definitely not above board. But it's not like a DDOS attack where Alibaba is trying to attack Anthropics servers. Alibaba is simply doing exactly what Anthropic did to the rest of the internet, just targeting Anthropic and paying them to do so.
    - szszrk 3mo ago
      > But it's not like a DDOS attack where Alibaba is trying to attack Anthropics servers. Alibaba is simply doing exactly what Anthropic did to the rest of the internet, just targeting Anthropic and paying them to do so. Thank you, this is exactly the meritum here. We faced a mass scale service abuse and licensed intellectual property theft, but we are supposed to defend it because "some of it was not stolen!!1!1"? It is progress, it is amazing, it also is harmful in many ways and pure greed.
- freeopinion 3mo ago
  Be careful to properly identify the bad behavior. A customer who buys a product for less money than it cost to produce has not necessarily done anything wrong. They just took advantage of a loss leader. That's on the seller. Did you notice that when Valve was displeased about scalpers, Valve changed Valve's behavior? It doesn't seem reasonable to complain that a customer of your AI service received that service for less money than it cost you to provide that service. I don't think that is the complaint here at all. If that was the issue, they could just raise their price. As most everybody seems to notice, this is just a reenactment of what was once written for comedic effect: "You're trying to kidnap what I have rightfully stolen!" Perhaps an arrangement can be reached. https://clip.cafe/the-princess-bride-1987/youre-trying-kidnap-what-ive-rightfully-stolen/ https://clip.cafe/the-princess-bride-1987/youre-trying-kidna...
petilon 3mo ago
Has it been proved in a court of law that it is a copyright violation? In some cases if the model regurgitates the original material then that is clearly copyright violation, but if the model "learns" from the source material just like a human brain would then that's not a copyright violation.
- 0xbadcafebee 3mo ago
  No, what was proved in court was that they downloaded and trained on millions of pirated books. The court said their use of books is fair use, but stealing them isn't. I think we're going to see cases that find distillation is also fair use. You're using the competing model like a book. You pay for it, you use it (read it), it informs your model, but you aren't repeating/reselling what the model told you verbatim. Foreign labs may still run afoul of competing labs' Terms of Service, and they may also pay a settlement (or not, it's a different jurisdiction after all), but the damage is already done. Distillation will become uncontroversial when done legally.
  - inigyou 3mo ago
    Are LLMs even copyrightable? If not, no need to speculate fair use.
- chpatrick 3mo ago
  Then distillation isn't a violation either by extension.
  - petilon 3mo ago
    I would agree, if they are inspecting static output of American AI models without using their compute resources.
    - platinumrad 3mo ago
      Aren't they buying the use of these resources just like any other customer?

zobzu 3mo ago

even if you disregard training costs, pure inference costs are a problem same reason other api have rate limit. this is an attack to bypass the rate limit.

szszrk 3mo ago
Still calling it an "attack" feels like a stretch. They literally had to pay for that "attack", no matter how many accounts they used. Google was killing many websites for decades with their crawlers. Most large websites decided to create dedicated infrastructure for their traffic alone. Somehow they didn't participate in that cost and were not called the attackers.
- w0m 3mo ago
  > and were not called the attackers. This is the mental mental leaps I'm struggling with here. Did you not live through that era where they were explicitly and repeatedly called out as 'attacks'? They were generally tolerated/hardenee around as they provided value-in-discoverability.
  - munk-a 3mo ago
    Just to ensure you don't gaslight yourself - I did live through that era and I worked on and supported a niche community (a MUD) where we did a lot of work encouraging marketing and discoverability through MUD forums as well as making sure our page was accurately and minimally keyword tagged and highly available for indexers. In the time since that era search engines have transformed into platforms themselves that do engage in more parasitic behavior but it's important not to assume that the way it is now is how it always was - that's a rather defeatist path to walk down where you ignore awareness of the fact that there can be a highly profitable non-enshittified search engine that supports, rather than destroys, the ecosystem it benefits from. It was better and, if we're diligent, it can be better again.
  - achr2 3mo ago
    Ding. Ding. Ding. "Provided value to the content author". AI scrapping negatively impacts the content author with zero compensation. There is no mutual benefit.
  - szszrk 3mo ago
    True, I may have generalized too much. I did lived through that era. Outside of people actually working for those companies barely anyone known. For many of us (not working for US dotcoms and other big fish) this was a curiosity we learned fairly recently. Especially on "local" media, papers and socials, this discussion was completely missing. Even today. But now any AI brawl is almost mainstream.
- abustamam 3mo ago
  > [Google] were not called the attackers. They should be. But as the saying goes, one website/company dying is a "tragedy," lots of them dying at the hands of one company is a statistic of corporate growth. Or something like that. And then of course when the tables turn on a company and they're the ones getting bombarded, they cry foul. Keep in mind Anthropic did many similar things that you mentioned Google did. I think the term "attack" here is appropriate but not in the way Anthropic is framing it. Alibaba is clearly violating terms to extract data, so that's definitely not above board. But it's not like a DDOS attack where Alibaba is trying to attack Anthropics servers. Alibaba is simply doing exactly what Anthropic did to the rest of the internet, just targeting Anthropic and paying them to do so.
  - szszrk 3mo ago
    > But it's not like a DDOS attack where Alibaba is trying to attack Anthropics servers. Alibaba is simply doing exactly what Anthropic did to the rest of the internet, just targeting Anthropic and paying them to do so. Thank you, this is exactly the meritum here. We faced a mass scale service abuse and licensed intellectual property theft, but we are supposed to defend it because "some of it was not stolen!!1!1"? It is progress, it is amazing, it also is harmful in many ways and pure greed.
freeopinion 3mo ago
Be careful to properly identify the bad behavior. A customer who buys a product for less money than it cost to produce has not necessarily done anything wrong. They just took advantage of a loss leader. That's on the seller. Did you notice that when Valve was displeased about scalpers, Valve changed Valve's behavior? It doesn't seem reasonable to complain that a customer of your AI service received that service for less money than it cost you to provide that service. I don't think that is the complaint here at all. If that was the issue, they could just raise their price. As most everybody seems to notice, this is just a reenactment of what was once written for comedic effect: "You're trying to kidnap what I have rightfully stolen!" Perhaps an arrangement can be reached. https://clip.cafe/the-princess-bride-1987/youre-trying-kidnap-what-ive-rightfully-stolen/ https://clip.cafe/the-princess-bride-1987/youre-trying-kidna...

petilon 3mo ago

Has it been proved in a court of law that it is a copyright violation? In some cases if the model regurgitates the original material then that is clearly copyright violation, but if the model "learns" from the source material just like a human brain would then that's not a copyright violation.

0xbadcafebee 3mo ago
No, what was proved in court was that they downloaded and trained on millions of pirated books. The court said their use of books is fair use, but stealing them isn't. I think we're going to see cases that find distillation is also fair use. You're using the competing model like a book. You pay for it, you use it (read it), it informs your model, but you aren't repeating/reselling what the model told you verbatim. Foreign labs may still run afoul of competing labs' Terms of Service, and they may also pay a settlement (or not, it's a different jurisdiction after all), but the damage is already done. Distillation will become uncontroversial when done legally.
- inigyou 3mo ago
  Are LLMs even copyrightable? If not, no need to speculate fair use.
chpatrick 3mo ago
Then distillation isn't a violation either by extension.
- petilon 3mo ago
  I would agree, if they are inspecting static output of American AI models without using their compute resources.
  - platinumrad 3mo ago
    Aren't they buying the use of these resources just like any other customer?