5 ms·

> Distillation is NOT an attack. From the article - > 28.8 million exchanges with Claude through almost 25,000 fraudulent accounts wouldn't that be considere

by w0m 3mo ago

> Distillation is NOT an attack. From the article - > 28.8 million exchanges with Claude through almost 25,000 fraudulent accounts wouldn't that be considered an attack? Not sure what I'm missing here.

dundarious 3mo ago
Attack or customer
stingraycharles 3mo ago
Let’s not forget that by the same logic, Anthropic et al are “attacking” copyright holders all around the world by scraping their data unauthorized for training. Pot calling kettle black.
- w0m 3mo ago
  i mean, i got 5 replies in a minute of asking, and none deny it's an "attack", they simply say "good". HN should be better discourse.
  - Retr0id 3mo ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ken_McElroy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ken_McElroy
- techpression 3mo ago
  Not only that, daily flooding websites with almost infinite amounts of request for ”web searches”. DDoS-by-VC money.
svachalek 3mo ago
Is an attempt to copy all or parts of a model an attack, when models have very questionable copyright status? Maybe? I don't think most people have much sympathy here though.
roblabla 3mo ago
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.
VBprogrammer 3mo ago
It's merely a ToS violation.
- jyscao 3mo ago
  Exactly, calling it “illicit” is funny. Your ToS isn’t law.
  - wmorgan 3mo ago
    Illicit means maybe against the law but definitely against the rules, for example an illicit affair. The word for against the law is illegal, from Latin, or unlawful, from Germanic. I guess the Germanic cousin of "illicit" would be "forbidden."
    - kennywinker 3mo ago
      Extramarital affairs are against the law in many countries and 17 US states. “Illicit affair” is potentially a holdover from when it was illegal more places, not just a conflating of against the rules with illegality. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adultery_laws https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adultery_laws
    - rlucas 3mo ago
      "Licit" in English usage also carries the weight of its connotation in church ("canon") law, wherein it can refer to acts that are considered not only to have occurred spiritually ("valid") according to the law, but have been done in conformity with the process laid out in the law. For example, canon law asserts that certain sacraments such as marriage or baptism can be conducted validly but illicitly, such that the marriage is still considered to have occurred, but it wasn't done the "right way." In contrast, there are some things that, if done illicitly, aren't valid either. (In this case I think it's because there's a notion that there's a supernatural/spiritual aspect to certain acts that transcends whether they're done licitly, whereas certain other acts are purely creations of human law and therefore if not done licitly are void ab initio.)
- digitaltrees 3mo ago
dec0dedab0de 3mo ago
That's violating TOS, spamming, possibly a DDOS, but the distillation in and of itself is not an attack it's just using the model. Like the difference between scraping a site with one or two active connections vs thousands. It's not the scraping that is an attack, it is how they are going about it
- re-thc 3mo ago
  > That's violating TOS, spamming, possibly a DDOS As in distributed distillation of service?
HarHarVeryFunny 3mo ago
Just sending a request to a service does not constitute an "attack". It seems that what Anthropic mean by "fraudulent account" is probably just one violating their terms of service - misuse of a subscription account, and/or the presumed nature of what the user was trying to do. I guess Anthropoic would regard any developer using their subscription plan with OpenCode to be operating a "fraudulent account", maybe an "attacker" too. Now we know how they think of anyone using Claude to develop software competing with Anthropic. Only an "attacker" would want to vibe code their own harness, or god forbid want to learn how to build/train an LLM. Of course Anthropic's wording is intended to be deliberately provocative, since they are trying to manipulate the US government into shutting down the Chinese competition.

by w0m 3mo ago

dundarious 3mo ago

Attack or customer

stingraycharles 3mo ago

Let’s not forget that by the same logic, Anthropic et al are “attacking” copyright holders all around the world by scraping their data unauthorized for training. Pot calling kettle black.

w0m 3mo ago
i mean, i got 5 replies in a minute of asking, and none deny it's an "attack", they simply say "good". HN should be better discourse.
- Retr0id 3mo ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ken_McElroy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ken_McElroy
techpression 3mo ago
Not only that, daily flooding websites with almost infinite amounts of request for ”web searches”. DDoS-by-VC money.

svachalek 3mo ago

Is an attempt to copy all or parts of a model an attack, when models have very questionable copyright status? Maybe? I don't think most people have much sympathy here though.

roblabla 3mo ago

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.

VBprogrammer 3mo ago

It's merely a ToS violation.

jyscao 3mo ago
Exactly, calling it “illicit” is funny. Your ToS isn’t law.
- wmorgan 3mo ago
  Illicit means maybe against the law but definitely against the rules, for example an illicit affair. The word for against the law is illegal, from Latin, or unlawful, from Germanic. I guess the Germanic cousin of "illicit" would be "forbidden."
  - kennywinker 3mo ago
    Extramarital affairs are against the law in many countries and 17 US states. “Illicit affair” is potentially a holdover from when it was illegal more places, not just a conflating of against the rules with illegality. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adultery_laws https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adultery_laws
  - rlucas 3mo ago
    "Licit" in English usage also carries the weight of its connotation in church ("canon") law, wherein it can refer to acts that are considered not only to have occurred spiritually ("valid") according to the law, but have been done in conformity with the process laid out in the law. For example, canon law asserts that certain sacraments such as marriage or baptism can be conducted validly but illicitly, such that the marriage is still considered to have occurred, but it wasn't done the "right way." In contrast, there are some things that, if done illicitly, aren't valid either. (In this case I think it's because there's a notion that there's a supernatural/spiritual aspect to certain acts that transcends whether they're done licitly, whereas certain other acts are purely creations of human law and therefore if not done licitly are void ab initio.)
digitaltrees 3mo ago

dec0dedab0de 3mo ago

That's violating TOS, spamming, possibly a DDOS, but the distillation in and of itself is not an attack it's just using the model. Like the difference between scraping a site with one or two active connections vs thousands. It's not the scraping that is an attack, it is how they are going about it

re-thc 3mo ago
> That's violating TOS, spamming, possibly a DDOS As in distributed distillation of service?

HarHarVeryFunny 3mo ago

Just sending a request to a service does not constitute an "attack". It seems that what Anthropic mean by "fraudulent account" is probably just one violating their terms of service - misuse of a subscription account, and/or the presumed nature of what the user was trying to do. I guess Anthropoic would regard any developer using their subscription plan with OpenCode to be operating a "fraudulent account", maybe an "attacker" too. Now we know how they think of anyone using Claude to develop software competing with Anthropic. Only an "attacker" would want to vibe code their own harness, or god forbid want to learn how to build/train an LLM. Of course Anthropic's wording is intended to be deliberately provocative, since they are trying to manipulate the US government into shutting down the Chinese competition.