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Gpt4free repo given takedown notice by OpenAI

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Re: Gpt4free repo given takedown notice by OpenAI

#161

Post by hombre_fatal »

charcircuit wrote: post #53
sandis wrote: post #38

A lot of comments confuse this with a different repo. It has nothing to do with the name. This project is/was a way to use LLM APIs on someone else's dime. It's the equivalent of "S3 4 free" where someone would collect exposed AWS credentials and use them to store their stuff.

This isn't about exposed credentials though. It would be like an autmatic image uploder that could pick an image hosting site such as imgur and upload the image for you and give you a link. Services are offering the ability to host images for you. You aren't stealing imgur's s3 credentials. They just let any user upload images for free despite the fact it technically costs them money to host the file for you. Similar…

No, the 1:1 analogy you're looking for is realizing someone has a poorly protected api.domain.com endpoint that uploads images to their S3 bucket and then using that to host your own images in their bucket instead of paying for your own.

Gpt4free uses API vulnerabilities that ultimately proxy to OpenAI's API with someone else's OpenAI credentials so that you don't have to pay for it. That's the whole gimmick.

These API endpoints aren't public service open relays which seems to be what you're trying to claim in your analogy:

- https://github.com/xtekky/gpt4free/issues/153

- https://github.com/xtekky/gpt4free/issues/125

Re: Gpt4free repo given takedown notice by OpenAI

#162

Post by dragonwriter »

selfmodruntime wrote: post #133
bee_rider wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any law is ultimately enforced by the government. There isn’t a different type of law to which the constitution doesn’t apply (I mean it doesn’t say a ton about limiting various types of laws—laws around contracts, state law, etc etc—but it still applies, it just doesn’t say much). However, this seems more like an issue of corporate policy than law. Github needs to have some policy that ends up with them taking down…

> Any law is ultimately enforced by the government So? That’s not what the first amendment applies to. You do not have first amendment rights in civil cases. This is not “an idea”. It’s just how it is. See libel.

> > Any law is ultimately enforced by the government

> So? That’s not what the first amendment applies to.

Yes it is.

> You do not have first amendment rights in civil cases.

Yes, you do; that’s why US defamation law is more limited than the common law it derives from, and where Fair Use as a judicial application of the First Amendment came from before it was codified in statute.

> See libel.

Libel is a perfect example of how you do have First Amendment rights in civil cases. Here's a long list of cases applying the First Amendment in the libel/defamation context:

https://www.mtsu.edu/first-amendment/encyclopedia/case/63/li...

Re: Gpt4free repo given takedown notice by OpenAI

#163

Post by 0xDEF »

jrochkind1 wrote: post #131
supermatt wrote: post #43

Not to be confused with gpt4all https://github.com/nomic-ai/gpt4all which is a "free" GPT LLM. It seems this gpt4free was basically hijacking 3rd parties services that use GPT-4, bypassing the official OpenAI APIs in order to avoid paying for inference. Of course, that means that the hijacked 3rd parties are the ones footing the bill... I'm not surprised they have been issued a takedown notice.

It's not clear to me that DMCA Takedown is an applicable legal process for that, but I guess when does that ever stop anyone these days. What specific US laws do folks think that repo (or running/using the software in that repo) might have been violating? (I agree it seems likely that it's _some_ law, I'm not challenging that just asking if anyone has a legal analysis they want to share).

They should be happy that OpenAI went after them with the DMCA and not for computer hacking and fraud, which is what they technically did by hijacking other people's API keys.

Re: Gpt4free repo given takedown notice by OpenAI

#164

Post by from »

dragonwriter wrote: post #104
hedora wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_Fraud_and_Abuse_Act

Assuming that those third-party services are ones that the public can access via their own web interfaces, such that the only thing unauthorized is the manner in which the APIs are consumed, this would seem (unless I am missing more specific precedent) to fall out of CFAA coverage as a result of the Van Buren v. United States decision.

I remember seeing "Help: FBI criminally charged me with $6MM loss for hotlinking. I didn't do it" on HN earlier this year (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30589489). Was this person lying?

Re: Gpt4free repo given takedown notice by OpenAI

#165

Post by glitchc »

jrochkind1 wrote: post #131
supermatt wrote: post #43

Not to be confused with gpt4all https://github.com/nomic-ai/gpt4all which is a "free" GPT LLM. It seems this gpt4free was basically hijacking 3rd parties services that use GPT-4, bypassing the official OpenAI APIs in order to avoid paying for inference. Of course, that means that the hijacked 3rd parties are the ones footing the bill... I'm not surprised they have been issued a takedown notice.

It's not clear to me that DMCA Takedown is an applicable legal process for that, but I guess when does that ever stop anyone these days. What specific US laws do folks think that repo (or running/using the software in that repo) might have been violating? (I agree it seems likely that it's _some_ law, I'm not challenging that just asking if anyone has a legal analysis they want to share).

A lawyer must have advised this, as financial fraud likely has a higher burden of proof. They might still proceed with criminal charges (if a DA agrees) or a lawsuit.

Re: Gpt4free repo given takedown notice by OpenAI

#166

Post by user3939382 »

selfmodruntime wrote: post #37
conradev wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Releasing code to use undocumented APIs is speech, and is regulated as such You have to run the code to violate the terms of use, which is primarily used to bar you from the service for misusing it.

Time and time again. You are protected in your speech from the government . Commercial law does and will still apply. Arbitrary company decisions happen all the time, and GitHub makes it clear that they won’t refrain from deleting repos for whatever reason.

> You are protected in your speech from the government

In theory. In practice we see in the Twitter files, the new rule is that government agencies are free to send takedown requests to social media platforms for speech that disagrees with our (abhorrent) foreign policy.

Re: Gpt4free repo given takedown notice by OpenAI

#168

Post by glitchc »

dubcanada wrote: post #99
ivalm wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are providing a service, we pay for it, and they reinvest in improving the service. That’s the basic business practice.

I think you missed the memo of the comment. They were referring to the fact that everything ChatGPT is built on is other peoples work. Beyond the actual building of the model details, there is nothing that ChatGPT owns. All the content they use to train, all of the art they use to train. Everything is stolen/used without permission. Obviously there is more to it than that, because you published it on the internet. Bu…

This is an incorrect and unfair statement that would not pass the test in any court of law. ChatGPT uniquely orders information in a way that gives them a competitive advantage in the marketplace. While the source information is public, the ordering of it is proprietary and a trade secret.

Your argument is a reductio ad absurdum to "everything is made of atoms and no one ones atoms, ergo no one owns anything."

Re: Gpt4free repo given takedown notice by OpenAI

#169

Post by krapp »

user3939382 wrote: post #166
selfmodruntime wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Time and time again. You are protected in your speech from the government . Commercial law does and will still apply. Arbitrary company decisions happen all the time, and GitHub makes it clear that they won’t refrain from deleting repos for whatever reason.

> You are protected in your speech from the government In theory. In practice we see in the Twitter files, the new rule is that government agencies are free to send takedown requests to social media platforms for speech that disagrees with our (abhorrent) foreign policy.

>In practice we see in the Twitter files, the new rule is that government agencies are free to send takedown requests to social media platforms for speech that disagrees with our (abhorrent) foreign policy.

Where in the Twitter files did it show that social media platforms would be punished with jail time or violence or anything if they refused to obey the government's orders?

Because unless you can demonstrate the government was putting a gun to Twitter's head and would not take no for an answer, that isn't a "new rule" it's literally just the government making a request. Which they and anyone else is and has always been allowed to do. And which social media platforms have sometimes refused without reprisal. I mean, I see speech that disagrees with American foreign policy all the time on social media. No one's being sent to the camps for it. It doesn't even get censored.

Re: Gpt4free repo given takedown notice by OpenAI

#170

Post by jrochkind1 »

bhaney wrote: post #155
jrochkind1 wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not clear to me that DMCA Takedown is an applicable legal process for that, but I guess when does that ever stop anyone these days. What specific US laws do folks think that repo (or running/using the software in that repo) might have been violating? (I agree it seems likely that it's _some_ law, I'm not challenging that just asking if anyone has a legal analysis they want to share).

Does "takedown notice" automatically equal "DMCA"? The repo itself and the parent to your comment don't mention DMCA at all.

Hm, good point, I think of "takedown notice" as being about the DMCA, because I never heard that term at all before the DMCA, I think of it as a term of art from DMCA. But people could be using it differently or mis-using it.

However, this is on Github. Github specifically has a "DMCA Takedown Policy" [1]. I don't believe they have any other policy or procedure involving a "takedown notice". But sure, I could be wrong, or the notice on the repo could be not quite right about what's going on.

Other companies, even big ones, will just take down anything a big corporation asks them to, with no written policy or a written policy basically saying that's what they'll do, while using language implying the DMCA (like "takedown notice"), when that's not what they're doing at all. But Github has actually been pretty good at actually doing this according to the procedure spelled out in DMCA, and not just randomly for whatever another big corporation might want. And being clear about what they're doing why if they're doing something else.

[1] https://docs.github.com/en/site-policy/content-removal-polic...

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