Anthropic Issues Copyright Takedown Requests To Remove 8,000+ Copies of Claude Code Source Code
- Reference: 0181200602
- News link: https://developers.slashdot.org/story/26/04/01/158240/anthropic-issues-copyright-takedown-requests-to-remove-8000-copies-of-claude-code-source-code
- Source link:
> Programmers combing through the source code so far have marveled on social media at some of Anthropic's tricks for getting its Claude AI models to operate as Claude Code. One feature asks the models to go back periodically through tasks and consolidate their memories -- a process it calls dreaming. Another appears to instruct Claude Code in some cases to go "undercover" and not reveal that it is an AI when publishing code to platforms like GitHub. Others found tags in the code that appeared pointed at future product releases. The code even included a Tamagotchi-style pet called "Buddy" that users could interact with.
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> After Anthropic requested that GitHub remove copies of its proprietary code, another programmer used other AI tools to rewrite the Claude Code functionality in other programming languages. Writing on GitHub, the programmer said the effort was aimed at keeping the information available without risking a takedown. That new version has itself become popular on the programming platform.
[1] https://developers.slashdot.org/story/26/03/31/172257/claude-codes-source-code-leaks-via-npm-source-maps
[2] https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/anthropic-races-to-contain-leak-of-code-behind-claude-ai-agent-4bc5acc7
hohoho (Score:5, Insightful)
> After Anthropic requested that GitHub remove copies of its proprietary code, another programmer used other AI tools to rewrite the Claude Code functionality in other programming languages. Writing on GitHub, the programmer said the effort was aimed at keeping the information available without risking a takedown. That new version has itself become popular on the programming platform.
Talk about a money shot. If Anthropic argues that this use doesn't wash away restrictions, then they're also arguing that their software is illegal. Shades of copyleft.
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The article is paywalled and every other article I found was obviously LLM generated shit and didn't link to this new implementation. It took me a bit, but I found at least one of the Rust implementations of Claude's CLI:
[1]https://github.com/Outcomefocu... [github.com]
I was to see Anthropic choke on this so bad.
Courts still haven't really ruled on AI generated code in any big countries yet, as far as I can tell. Courts could view AI code the same as AI generated images: non-copyrightable. Generated images can sti
[1] https://github.com/OutcomefocusAi/ClaudeRustRewrite
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Yes. I too want to see the GenAI industry burn to the ground. I am making popcorn as I get ready to watch Anthropic being hoisted on its own petard...
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>> After Anthropic requested that GitHub remove copies of its proprietary code, another programmer used other AI tools to rewrite the Claude Code functionality in other programming languages. Writing on GitHub, the programmer said the effort was aimed at keeping the information available without risking a takedown. That new version has itself become popular on the programming platform.
> Talk about a money shot. If Anthropic argues that this use doesn't wash away restrictions, then they're also arguing that their software is illegal. Shades of copyleft.
No, they're arguing there's ways to use their software to commit an illegal act, which is true of literally anything.
I can't imagine anyone making the argument that using AI tools to rewrite code in another language removes the copyright.
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I'll take 'what is Clean-room design' for $50, Alex
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*BUZZ*
Clean-room design requires that the new model be built from a description of the original by someone with no exposure to the original. You can't look at the code and rewrite it and call it a clean room recreation. Typically it requires separate teams: one to examine the original and document what it does (but NOT HOW), and a second team to build a new model from those specifications.
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clean-room_design
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You say "two separate teams," but Claude pronounces it as "two separate processes with no IPC except the specs files."
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> *BUZZ*
> Clean-room design requires that the new model be built from a description of the original by someone with no exposure to the original.
Look at the rust repo. They are 100% clear that they did exactly that. Each team consisted only of one agent (an advantage, since the agent can work much faster and with AI code advantages, but still clearly a compete software team). One team (agent) saw the code and wrote a spec. A different team (second agent) saw the spec and wrote Rust code to match it.
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You realize that's extremely easy to do with AI, right?
If I can run software, I can run run function/system tracing and introspection on it. Simply that. The difference between this and looking at the code is almost negligible, except in terms of scope of difficulty.
And with AI, I can automate the entire process.
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> I can't imagine anyone making the argument that using AI tools to rewrite code in another language removes the copyright.
I can't imagine anyone not understanding that their right to exist is based in part upon that belief, because otherwise they have been willfully aiding and abetting mass copyright infringement.
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> No, they're arguing there's ways to use their software to commit an illegal act, which is true of literally anything.
> I can't imagine anyone making the argument that using AI tools to rewrite code in another language removes the copyright.
It had better remove copyright, since all AI coding agents are huge engines for regurgitating code harvested from github and stack overflow without any attribution or respect for the original licenses. If this use doesn't elide copyright, then the LLMs themselves have no right to exist.
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I can't imagine anyone making the argument that using AI tools to rewrite code in another language removes the copyright.
Literally everyone is making that argument right now, like ChartDev:
[1]https://www.theregister.com/20... [theregister.com]
[1] https://www.theregister.com/2026/03/06/ai_kills_software_licensing/
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> I can't imagine anyone making the argument that using AI tools to rewrite code in another language removes the copyright.
That argument has [1]already been made [lwn.net].
[1] https://lwn.net/Articles/1061534/
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No but you could probably feed the source code into an AI, ask it to write a specification for what this code does. Then take that specification over to another AI and ask it to crank out code for the specification.
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Interesting idea but most likely both AI systems were trained on the original code in question. I can only imagine the millions being spent to make a horrible law to help protect Anthropic's code base be copyright protected.
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> Interesting idea but most likely both AI systems were trained on the original code in question. I can only imagine the millions being spent to make a horrible law to help protect Anthropic's code base be copyright protected.
Anthropic may well have trained their agents on some of their customer's code. I guarantee you that they have never trained it on their own core source code.
John Gilmore (Score:4, Informative)
"The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it".
I went to a party at his very nice Victorian house in San Francisco once, when I used to hang out with Sun nerds.
They should ask the MPAA.... (Score:3)
... how well taking down [1]DeCSS [wikipedia.org] worked out.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DeCSS
Stupid (Score:2)
This is the most asinine thing they could have done. Everyone with even a slight interest has copied this code. Those takedown requests just make them look foolish.
Re:Stupid (Score:4, Insightful)
This is actually a smart move if they envision ever trying to go after other companies for using their code. "If it wasn't for public use, why didn't you even try to get the distributor to take it down?"
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Correct. Even if they can win the case for copyright, they would lose things like triple damages for wilful infringement. All a defendant would have to do is point to a different repo with no copyright identification and say that they copied from that without realizing it was the Anthropic code. As it is, there will be no such repo, except on dark web sites so that claim will be much harder to make.
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"How dare you steal from us the thing we made publicly available which we use to make money from all the stuff we stole!"...is quite the position for them to take.
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I'm sure there are techniques which will be readily implemented in at least one of a half dozen different agent platforms - assuming there's any merit in it. It's too stupidly easy to build things now to really keep anything "unique" private. People will figure it out and do as they will to get things they want to use.
I personally have an agent framework that's a combination of capabilities of different agent platforms that does things the way I want to. I haven't shared it, though judging by the quality an
Hahaha, Streisand Effect, hahahahaha (Score:3)
Apparently these noobs have never heard of it.
Oh the Irony .. (Score:3)
Oh the Irony. a company whose business is built on other peoples works is suing for copyright infringement.
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> Oh the Irony. a company whose business is built on other peoples works is suing for copyright infringement.
Poetic justice.
Grab Your Popcorn (Score:2)
It's time to sit back and watch a good old game of Whack-a-Mole. Even if Anthropic is successful at taking down the actual source code, most of the people who would want to study it already have it. And they can gently explore the boundaries of what they can communicate without Anthropic being able to do anything about it.
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Tee shirts printed with Claude source code when?
Too late. (Score:2)
Claude has already seen it.
April Foos! (Score:2)
Anybody else around here long enough to remember the good ol' days when Slashdot would post (exclusively?) fake articles on April Fool's Day every year?
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OMG!!! PONIES!!1!
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Remember? We've been actively trying to forget.
We didn't know how good we had it. Now, we wish the absurdities were just April Fool's Day nonsense...
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> Remember? We've been actively trying to forget.
> We didn't know how good we had it. Now, we wish the absurdities were just April Fool's Day nonsense...
I noticed this across *all* the news sites I read on April 1st. No "joke" news on any of them, that I noticed. I can only conclude that this is because the real news in 2026 is so batshit insane. Poe's Law and all that.
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Thanks for the insight. I saw a couple of very obvious April's fools messages before going to bed and then ignored the day. Now I understand the somewhat depressing reason why.
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Yes, it was miserable nonsense.
This affects every future NDA... (Score:2)
... that any future Anthropic employee ever signs. The sourcecode contains trade secrets. Everybody who worked for Anthropic at the time of the leak is enjoined from talking publicly about those trade secrets. But consider the programmer they hire tomorrow, who has already read the leaked sourcecode. He already knows these trade secrets by virtue of their publication (no matter how inadvertent). So his NDA is inherently flimsier - Anthropic can't restrict him from talking about stuff he already knew about b
They also harmed the community (Score:2)
And if you forked the very public legitimate project at [1]https://github.com/anthropics/... [github.com] they also DMCA'ed you and removed that fork, Despite the fact that it is is perfectly legitimate and considered normal on Github to fork public repos like that As an act of social support and in order to help find bugs and report them.
[1] https://github.com/anthropics/claude-code
Boo hoo (Score:1)
Sam Altman doesn't know how economics or the world works. Now add leaked information and the internet to the list. I liked him better when he was fired.
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What does this have to do with Sam Altman? This is about Anthropic.
Anthropic is spiraling (Score:2)
Antrhopic seems to be spiraling of late, doing a lot of things which are shooting themselves in the foot.
- This "accidental" code release (I'm not convinced it was an accident and not a fancy PR stunt)
- The complete nerfing to useless of Claude Max plans (less usage, heavily throttled to the point where even getting close to quota has been impossible, and waiting 30m+ for a simple prompt response often takes longer than doing it myelf)
- Consistent API outages for the past several weeks during US business ho
Stolen is one thing (Score:3)
Accidentally released is another.
If your process results in making your code public... too late? You published. Learn something from that and update your process.
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> If your process results in making your code public... too late? You published.
"Code is law".
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More "information wants to be free".
Once code is published, anybody can learn from it and be inspired to create their own version of it. Trying to police that is impossible.
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Not necessarily impossible...but almost always inadvisable. They can be sure that all their actual competitors already have copies before they get the takedown issued.
In this case I don't think a takedown will even limit the damage...it might well exacerbate it.
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That's a good license question. If the "binaries" (the minimized version) were released under some free-to-use license, the bundled source is still not open source, but they also can't revoke the free-to-use permissions granted by the license for the things they officially release.