[auggierose]

Nah, that doesn't work for academic papers. You usually access them anonymously anyway through your institution (which has a subscription). So even if they watermark (and I don't think they do), they can only watermark the institution.

[afandian]

There are plenty of instances of big-name publishers sending nastygrams to whole institutions and/or cutting them off for perceived abuse.

[auggierose]

In that case the institution should unsubscribe and point their members to sci-hub.