Three-Year Sentence for Stealing LibTV Compute Power

"This Guy Got Too Greedy"

Yesterday I came across a news story about a self-taught "genius" who, after learning how to call AI platform APIs, got the bright idea to game the system.

He set his sights on a large-model aggregation platform run by an AI company — yes, our very own Evoken — and used technical means to find an internal API that wasn't open to the public. Then he built his own platform to sell AI image and video generation services at cut-rate prices.

LibTV is hiring like crazy, but don't steal our compute

His method was remarkably crude: register new users to collect free bonus credits, then pool those credits and resell them.

LibTV and Lovart are already middleman platforms. This guy built a middleman to middleman our middleman.

I'm pissed! How dare you middleman Melvin Chen's products!

Our Melvin is already selling at 61% off. Seedance 2.5 is down to 0.17 yuan per second. And you're still stealing???

The incident blew up earlier this year when Evoken noticed that two of its products, LibTV and Lovart, had suddenly been hit with over 4 million user registrations from a single IP address.

The platform upgraded its defenses multiple times. He bypassed every single one.

His response: "It wasn't even encrypted."

Melvin truly lives up to the name — he's been merciful to us, letting everyone use it freely.

But buddy, you're being a little ungrateful.

We upgraded LibTV and Lovart's defenses, added electronic signature verification. You kept at it, using AI tools to build automated scripts that forged signatures, bypassing verification to keep making calls.

Member accounts, registration emails, IP addresses, electronic signatures... Evoken's layers of defense, breached one by one 😭

In the end, this gentleman was convicted of illegally obtaining computer information system data by the Xuhui District People's Court: three years in prison, suspended for three years, plus a fine of 40,000 yuan.

Bro, you got too greedy this time. They kept upgrading defenses and you wouldn't let go. You're really treating my Melvin like a pushover.

Look how good Melvin was to you. And what did you bring LibTV and Lovart? 300,000 registered users and 34,000 yuan in losses from reselling generation services...

Wait, that's less than 0.1 yuan per registered user. Dude, go be a growth hacker. Xianyu said with this resume you could totally apply to be Minimax's head of growth.

Our LibTV fan group says Melvin won big this time — got 300,000 users for free and got the website vulnerabilities patched.

They're saying he and Melvin helped each other out, that Melvin should thank him, why'd they arrest him 😭 Some even say Melvin got greedy, biting the hand that fed him.

Here I must solemnly state: reverse-proxying APIs is illegal. Melvin did the right thing. This kind of person must be punished.

But this case does have one upside — it directly debunks the so-called rumor that Melvin was "watering down" Seedance. Precisely because Melvin has been using full-strength, original Seedance all along, that's why he attracted compute thieves.

Though I saw the news said "this website had no compute models of its own; user commands all called Evoken's APIs."

Actually the reporter probably didn't know that Evoken doesn't have its own compute models either (if Melvin has finished training one, I apologize to him). Users are all calling Volcano Engine's APIs.

The prosecutor also stated: "If such parasitic technical behavior is allowed to spread, legitimate platforms' substantial R&D investments will be difficult to recoup, directly dampening innovation momentum in the AI industry and undermining fair order in compute trading."

Actually Melvin doesn't have much R&D investment either. The big expense is buying Seedance API.

Anyway, coming back to this — this brother's thinking was fundamentally sound at its core.

Because video agents are supermarkets. As long as prices are low, users will come. So I just need to get cheap APIs somehow.

So how do you get the lowest API cost? Just steal it — zero cost! Who can compete with that?

Dreamina, Xiao Yunque, OiiOii, Flova — none of them can beat your prices. Even if you held a knife to Volcano Engine boss Dai Tan's throat, he couldn't let you zero-dollar shop.

I just think with this guy's skill level, he should get hired at any video agent company, to serve as their nuclear deterrent — promised to never be used first.

Now let's see who else dares to start a price war. Start a price war and I'll reverse-proxy you. I suggest every broke video agent company needs to keep a hacker on retainer.

(Cover image generated by ChatGPT, text 100% human-written)

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