Oh interesting. And yes YouTube-dl is a good comparison.
To be clear, I’ve had a few accounts on Midjourney used mostly for testing and demo purposes. At the moment I don’t have any Midjourney account hence TOS violation doesn’t apply.
I think you can make midjourney stop by using social media pressure, but you need to improve communications. For example don't start with "I'm making 16k a month" because most will think you can afford a lawyer.
Also, I repeat, consider explaining better what you do and what exactly are they accusing you of doing wrong and why they are wrong in doing so.
Also now that I see the screenshots, the way you phrased things it did look like you were the official midjourney api, so the trademark violation is there for sure.
They’re huge. I’m sure their toilet paper rolls are make of $16k bills
I used to worry that the biggest threat was them releasing an API.
I’ve since learned that they won’t do that because they charge monthly fees to their customers and when a customer doesn’t use their credits, the credits don’t roll over and Midjourney pockets the cash.
Based on your growth rate they'll have more toilet paper in the future though. It would be interesting to try to discover a way to coexist, and I wonder if everyone at Midjourney hates you with equal passion or if some are sympathetic or even see value.
I was really hoping to build out an amazing API product and when time came where they want to release one it would make more sense to acquire us. Alas.
Being a wise and thoughtful business owner, you already ran this concept by your own corporate attorney to get a written legal opinion before circumventing their TOS, right? ... No??
IMHO, stop calling yourself a Midjourney API of any kind and stop providing a service that uses Midjourney as a backend. You are not authorized to run Midjourney jobs using other people's account credentials; that's the TOS violation. Your lawyer will explain this to you.
If they don't intend to fix it, then what's the problem with waiting? The bug's still gonna be there in 90 (minus however long it's already been) days and rushing disclosure really doesn't reflect well on you as a researcher to the rest of the industry. Ofc if you have your own bug, you're welcome to disclose it whenever you want, even violating NDAs if you feel like the vendor hasn't gone far enough. There may be legal repercussions with that last bit, but again, that's up to you.
You're assuming your peers will agree with you. I'm gently suggesting that they may not, and you need that check.
You might be right. It might be the next Meltdown vulnerability. But it might not, and Apple already told you it isn't, and that's why you need to talk to your peers.
If by "tried" you mean you tested the same prompts, then yes, I'm sure the results weren't as good. Generally speaking, the reverse is usually true too.
To be clear, I’ve had a few accounts on Midjourney used mostly for testing and demo purposes. At the moment I don’t have any Midjourney account hence TOS violation doesn’t apply.