An Anthropic-backed DMCA effort to remove its recently leaked Claude Code client source code from GitHub this week resulted in the accidental removal of many legitimate forks of its official public code repository. While that overzealous takedown has now been reversed, Anthropic still faces an extreme uphill battle in limiting the spread of its recently leaked code.
The DMCA notice that GitHub received late Tuesday focuses on a repository containing the leaked source code originally posted by GitHub user nirholas (archived here) and nearly 100 specifically named forks of that repository. In a note appended to that request, though, GitHub said it had acted to take down a network of 8,100 similar forked repositories because “the submitter alleged that all or most of the forks were infringing to the same extent as the parent repository.”
That expanded takedown affected many repositories that didn’t contain leaked code but instead forked Anthropic’s official public Claude Code repository, which the company shares to encourage public bug reports and fixes. Many coders took to social media to complain about being swept up in the DMCA dragnet despite not sharing any leaked code.
“I’m sorry that your people shipped your source code, and that your lawyers don’t know how to read a repo,” coder Robert McLaws wrote. “I will be filing a DCMA counter-notice.”
By Wednesday, Anthropic had moved to fix the issue with GitHub, requesting that the site restrict its takedowns to the 96 fork URLs specifically listed in its takedown notice and to “reinstate all other repositories that were disabled by network-wide processing.” Anthropic’s head of Claude Code, Boris Cherny, said on social media that the overzealous takedowns were “not intentional,” and Anthropic’s Thariq Shihipar added that they were the result of “a communication mistake.”