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Claude Code is steganographically marking requests

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Re: Claude Code is steganographically marking requests

#771

Post by danlitt »

stale2002 wrote: post #459
danlitt wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have to admit that "downloading every book ever written for free from a repository of books that is itself illegal to compile and to run, in order to write a text generation tool" being legal is at least unintuitive, to put it mildly.

No it's not unintuitive. Just like I can learn from a book and nobody can make that illegal, so can other people transformative do the same with computers. Fair use is fair use.

For someone who finds this "not unintuitive" you sure are confused!

"Just like I can learn from a book" - ok. Are you allowed to go to libgen and download a book in order to learn from it, because learning is a fair use?

Re: Claude Code is steganographically marking requests

#772

Post by danlitt »

kalkin wrote: post #471
danlitt wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The code is not eligible for copyright. If they do not give you a copy of the source code, that does not matter. And if you don't know which parts were generated by LLM, you can't safely reuse the code.

> The code is not eligible for copyright. This is very much not what the linked case established.

Please explain. That is exactly what the linked case established.

Re: Claude Code is steganographically marking requests

#773

Post by doginasuit »

fwip wrote: post #734
doginasuit wrote: post #460

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is not checking that is the problem, it is sending obfuscated information about the user without disclosure. That is unacceptable in any context, let alone a tool that requires an unprecedented level of trust.

I'm trying not to be flippant (let me know if I failed), but most tools with an online connection send back a lot of information about you, with just about the same amount of disclosure (somewhere in the EULA it says they may). Especially if you play any online games with ranked or PvP, they are likely doing a ton of work to prevent cheaters - and this information is necessarily going to be obfuscated, to delay the c…

This isn't an online game we are talking about, it is a fundamentally different kind of application, non-deterministic and capable of manipulation. The bar is much higher. They should collect analytics if it is necessary to provide the service, but they should do so transparently. The solution to snare cheaters can't be worth the sacrifice of trust through non-transparent collection of user data. Although this particular information might not seem sensitive, if they are willing to use this method at all, they are probably willing to use it in other ways.

Re: Claude Code is steganographically marking requests

#775

Post by doginasuit »

humblyCrazy wrote: post #741
doginasuit wrote: post #460

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is not checking that is the problem, it is sending obfuscated information about the user without disclosure. That is unacceptable in any context, let alone a tool that requires an unprecedented level of trust.

I mean in the end they could have got all this info from IP + headers + API key right? So what is the issue?

Maybe you missed it in the post, they look for the value of an environment variable and send the obfuscated result. I'm guessing this particular variable isn't sensitive for most users, but the reality that they find it acceptable to snoop your environment and hide their tracks is a big red flag.

Re: Claude Code is steganographically marking requests

#776

Post by johnfn »

doginasuit wrote: post #770
johnfn wrote: post #523

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This entire thread has lost its collective mind. Tracking time zone has to be up there with IP address and referer in the list of "trivial things every company in the entire world collects about you", and these things are entirely trackable without your consent or even knowledge. You're gonna have to turn off the Internet.

It seems like the confusion is about whether it is common practice to collect analytics vs whether it is common/acceptable practice to do so without disclosure and to cover your tracks. I recognize that virtually every cloud service collects info. Even something as trivial as IP address and region are not too trivial to include in the EULA. What is the harm of that disclosure? If you are a company that wants to estab…

It's disclosed in the ToS like it's disclosed in the ToS of basically every service that exists today.

e.g. "Claude Code connects from users’ machines to Anthropic to log operational metrics such as latency, reliability, and usage patterns. "

Re: Claude Code is steganographically marking requests

#777

Post by JohnnyMarcone »

skywhopper wrote: post #645
solenoid0937 wrote: post #389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are the PRC's values? How are individual freedoms in China? What happens if you criticize the government as a Chinese citizen? Is it a good thing if a government that turns its citizens into red pulp for criticism, or disappears them in the middle of the night, or bans access to most media, is the first to a godlike superintelligence that gives them de-facto control of (and impose their values upon) the whole wo…

Democratic nations, at the behest of their billionaire patrons, are rapidly pursuing China’s approach to governance.

We still have elections and things can change. China would require a violent revolution to change governments.

Re: Claude Code is steganographically marking requests

#778

Post by cookiengineer »

brookst wrote: post #662
tripzilch wrote: post #572

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Do you think software should be regulated as a utility? I do think that AI models that were trained using the biggest intellectual property heist in human history should be a utility for all, yes.

I would 100% support this as long as the same is true for human works. Every artist is trained on thousands of years of art tradition. Copyright wasn’t a thing for the first many millennia of artistic creation, and we still got Bach and Michelangelo.

> Michelangelo

Did you know that Michelangelo was the first "label" for inventions and art? He sourced his material from other people and published it for them.

So it's kinda ironic (maybe on purpose?) that you mentioned him.

Re: Claude Code is steganographically marking requests

#780

Post by chii »

brookst wrote: post #662
tripzilch wrote: post #572

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Do you think software should be regulated as a utility? I do think that AI models that were trained using the biggest intellectual property heist in human history should be a utility for all, yes.

I would 100% support this as long as the same is true for human works. Every artist is trained on thousands of years of art tradition. Copyright wasn’t a thing for the first many millennia of artistic creation, and we still got Bach and Michelangelo.

> as long as the same is true for human works.

and it is.

Anyone can study Michelangelo or Bach, and learn their style.

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