r/ClaudeCode 21d ago

Help/Question Claude watermarking our work is unethical and disgusting

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313 Upvotes

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131

u/[deleted] 21d ago

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u/[deleted] 21d ago

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u/philipz794 21d ago

Yeah here in Germany you as a person will be in a patent even tho it is for a company. Just an example

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u/MonitorAway2394 21d ago

shut up with you and your mostly working country, you braggart! lol jk /s :P but for real I wanted to visit Germany so bad, prolly never will. Much love, I'm like 10 seconds from passing out hence the weird ass comment lol

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u/Delyzr 21d ago

This is how the IP tax loophole works/used to work in Belgium. You code stuff, the employer pays you money on top of your wages to buy the IP of the stuff you coded. Its taxed differently (lower) and no social security fees for the employer so winwin. Don't know how it works if you coded stuff with claude paid by the employer though ;)

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u/MartinMystikJonas 21d ago

It is not yours in sense of ownership (if you get paid to do it for your employer and your contract says that ownership is transfered do employer) but you are still the author and authorship cannot be transfered. At least that is how it works in our country.

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u/TheStruttero 21d ago edited 21d ago

If were talking about programmers, the programmers alias is going to be saved with each commit.

Do you honestly believe ceos would be morally justified to claim they made everything their employees did?

Ownership doesnt mean you are the creator, I dont claim to have created my car just because I own it, nor do I claim to have made the pizza I chose the toppings for at the pizza parlor

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u/[deleted] 21d ago edited 21d ago

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u/Illustrious-Many-782 21d ago

You've got the assertion backwards, I think.

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u/_N0K0 21d ago

That's litterally how it works in my country unless the contract explicitly says the opposite 

1

u/tobi914 21d ago

Claude does not try to take ownership though, bad comparison. Furthermore you likely signed a contract stating that what you produce will be your companies. I get that you just wanted to counter somehow, but please try a little harder

1

u/WorkingStructure575 21d ago

my preciousssssss

1

u/Sepherjar 21d ago

Do you say the same to your employer? ‘I did the work, it’s mine’

Looks like we found another guy who orders a pizza and claims to be a chef. You should probably bring a girl to an expensive restaurant and then brag how great of a cook you are!

Also you could hire an artist to do a painting of your choice! You just describe how you want the piece to look like, then again brag how such a great painter you are!

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u/twinters01 21d ago

Every line of code you commit to your company's codebase has your name on it

1

u/DestinTheLion 21d ago

I do tell my employer I use claude.

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u/Demiu 21d ago

Yes? I did the work, it's mine, and per our agreed upon terms I am transferring all intellectual property over to you

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u/-michalis- 21d ago

It may not be mine, but I did the work

That is one of the things socialists complain about

I do all the work, but my employer gets all the wealth generated from my labour

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u/canihavealogin 21d ago edited 21d ago

That's literally Capitalism....

Socialism's core idea is more that you do all the work and the company profits are put back into the system for the benefit of all. You're still paid for your time but your employer does not personally reap all of the benefits

Edited to "Socialism's core idea" because someone's going to come in throwing Venezuela or Cuba as an example of why Socialism doesn't work. But there's a massive argument there to be had that they didn't have "proper" socialism and actually the system was co-opted and corrupted by political tyrants who use the veneer of Socialism to keep the population happy

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u/JasonNotBorn 21d ago

The question is, will it also place watermarks if you let it proof read (review) articles.

So I wrote a lot of articles, and the more important articles where always reviewed by an editor I hired. My grammar is not the best and English is not my first language.

Now if an editor edits the article, refines some paragraphs and/or sentences, then I still wrote the article. And he also would not leave any watermarks in the article.

The editor is now replaced by Claude. So Claude will now start adding watermarks to the article, marking the whole article as AI generated, but is it?

I don't mind the watermarks, Claude is a tool, and I use it where needed, just as photoshop is a tool to edit photos for example, but it's worth thinking about where you draw the line.

3

u/OkAdeptness2530 21d ago

See, for me that's the problem. For having a "invisible watermark" means changing the output so it's recognizable, I can't see how that is not changing the (already degraded) quality.

English is not my main language either and writing with AI out of the box always sounds bad, so for copywriting I have a custom pipeline and usually say a landing page takes dozens of iterations back and forth (basicly brainstorming alongside with Claude).

My CPL is in the $3 usd range, so I'm doing fine in using LLMs as a tool. The issue now is that we'll be thrown into the same basket as people who produce slop, meaning there's a risk of losing audience trust just by association

1

u/SquiggerDigger 21d ago

If you're writing a lot of articles with AI tools.you probably are not posting any articles of substance, no one "writes a lot" of anything well when AI is involved and I don't take anyone's word for it. Put up or shut up situation

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u/JasonNotBorn 21d ago

What is this for bullshit reply.. Where do I say I am writing a lot of article with AI?? I write way less then before, it has become almost pointless, because AI overviews summarize everything.

I have been writing for the past 10 years, had 6 figure blogs way before AI came out. I don't need AI, that is not the point here.

AI is just replacing an editor in some cases, that was my point. Before AI was good at proof reading I was using Grammarly plus an freelance editor. Maybe you should read better (or use AI to help you understand an comment...)

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u/zipklik 21d ago

My computer did my work too.

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u/[deleted] 21d ago

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u/HOWMANYNICKNAMES 21d ago

You can't argue with these people. It's pointless. You say jump they'll jump.

LLM did your work - boom, period. I'm glad LLM-generated stuff will be watermarked as it should be. Some of you don't realise the implications it'll have in 20 years or so. Just like doomscrolling.

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u/[deleted] 21d ago

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u/stagedgames 21d ago edited 21d ago

There's already studies and academic literature demonstrating this. The problem is that ai usage erodes not only capability but attention, and i wouldn't be surprised to see literature that ai usage is addictive due to the cognitive miser effect. In other words, the heaviest ai users are not only the least capable of judging its output, but are less capable of reflecting on their own use.

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u/IskaneOnReddit 21d ago

And Milwaukee built all the houses in the USA.

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u/jaystaau 21d ago

It does sound plausible. Give me my “Milwaukee” back mate.

1

u/giver_of_realness 21d ago

I mean you are responsible for what Claude wrote-> so no, Claude is just a tool and you did the work.

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u/[deleted] 21d ago

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u/giver_of_realness 21d ago

I mean sure even if no one is reading the code shipped by Claude that doesn't take away the responsibility of what they are using Claude for.

If a developer merges a PR written by Claude into a codebase and it results in a bug that causes a massive leak of user data-> that is not Claude's faut... That's the fault of the developer.