You do, as the developer. Let's circle back to the original comment that started this discussion:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47594044

That comment is spot on. Claude adding a co-author to a commit is documentation to put a clear line between code you wrote and code claude generated which does not qualify for copyright protection.

The damning thing about this leak is the inclusion of undercover.ts. That means Anthropic has now been caught red handed distributing a tool designed to circumvent copyright law.

Currently, the US copyright application process has an AI disclosure requirement for the determination of applicability of submitted works for protections under US copyright law.

The copyright office still holds that human authorship is a core tenet of copyrightability, however, whether or not a submission meets the "de minimis" amount of AI-generated material to uphold a copyright claim is still being decided and refined by the courts and at the moment the distinction appears to fall on whether the AI was used "as a tool" or as "an author itself", with the former covered in certain cases and the latter not.

The registration process makes it clear that failure to disclose submissions in large contribution authored by contractor or ai can result in a rejection of copyright claim now or retroactive on discovery.

You do not apply for copyright. In the US you can, optionally, register a copyright. You do not have to, but it can increase how much you get if you go to court.

I do not know whether any other country even has copyright registration.

Your main point that this is something the courts (or new legislation) will decide is, of course, correct. I am inclined to think this is only a problem for people who are vibe coding. The moment a human contributes to the code that bit is definitely covered by copyright, and unless you can clearly separate out human and AI contributed bits saying the AI written bits are not covered is not going to make a practical difference.

My (limited) understanding was that without formal registration you cannot file any infringement suits against any works protected by said copyright. Then what's the point of the copyright other than getting to use that fancy 'c' superscript?

I think you're wrong but I may be wrong too, so if you have a link that talks about this formal registration requirement it would be great.

While copyright exists automatically upon creation, the Supreme Court ruled in 2019 that the registration certificate must be granted before you can initiate a lawsuit.