Anthropic's developers made an extremely basic configuration error, and as a result, the source-code for Claude Code - the company's flagship coding assistant product - has leaked and is being eagerly analyzed by many parties:
-
It's their enthusiastic deployment of AI tools for mass surveillance and mass killing. (Anthropic is no exception, despite what you may have heard:)
https://www.thetechbubble.info/p/how-much-a-dollar-cost
40/
If the media bosses get their way, and manage to make it even more illegal - and practically harder - to host, discuss, and publish facts about copyrighted works, then leaks like the Claude Code disclosures will never see the light of day. It's only because of decades of hard-fought battles to push back on this nonsense that we are able to identify and learn about the defects in Claude Code that are revealed by this source-code leak.
41/
-
If the media bosses get their way, and manage to make it even more illegal - and practically harder - to host, discuss, and publish facts about copyrighted works, then leaks like the Claude Code disclosures will never see the light of day. It's only because of decades of hard-fought battles to push back on this nonsense that we are able to identify and learn about the defects in Claude Code that are revealed by this source-code leak.
41/
I'm angry about the AI industry, but not because of *copyright*. I'm angry at them for the reasons Cat Valente articulated so well in her "Blood Money" essay:
https://catvalente.substack.com/p/blood-money-the-anthropic-settlement
These companies' stated goals are terrible:
> They took the books I wrote for children and used them to make it possible for children to not bother with reading ever again.
42/
-
I'm angry about the AI industry, but not because of *copyright*. I'm angry at them for the reasons Cat Valente articulated so well in her "Blood Money" essay:
https://catvalente.substack.com/p/blood-money-the-anthropic-settlement
These companies' stated goals are terrible:
> They took the books I wrote for children and used them to make it possible for children to not bother with reading ever again.
42/
> They took the books I wrote about love to create chatbots that isolate people and prevent them from finding human love in the real world, that make it difficult for them to even stand real love, which is not always agreeable, not always positive, not always focused on end-user engagement. They took the books I wrote about hope and glitter in the face of despair and oppression and used it to make a Despair-and-Oppression generator.
43/ -
> They took the books I wrote about love to create chatbots that isolate people and prevent them from finding human love in the real world, that make it difficult for them to even stand real love, which is not always agreeable, not always positive, not always focused on end-user engagement. They took the books I wrote about hope and glitter in the face of despair and oppression and used it to make a Despair-and-Oppression generator.
43/These goals are *entirely compatible with copyright*. The *New York Times* is suing over AI - and they're licensing their writers' words to train an AI model:
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/29/business/media/new-york-times-amazon-ai-licensing.html
The *NYT* wants more copyright. You know what the *NYT* *doesn't* want? More *labor* rights. The *NYT* are vicious union-busters:
https://actionnetwork.org/letters/new-york-times-stop-union-busting
44/
-
These goals are *entirely compatible with copyright*. The *New York Times* is suing over AI - and they're licensing their writers' words to train an AI model:
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/29/business/media/new-york-times-amazon-ai-licensing.html
The *NYT* wants more copyright. You know what the *NYT* *doesn't* want? More *labor* rights. The *NYT* are vicious union-busters:
https://actionnetwork.org/letters/new-york-times-stop-union-busting
44/
If we creative workers are going to pour our resources into a new policy to address the threats that our bosses - and the AI companies they are morally and temperamentally indistinguishable from - represent to our livelihoods, then let that new policy be a renewed sectoral bargaining right for *every* worker. It was sectoral bargaining (a collective, solidaristic right) and not copyright (an individual, commercial right) that saw off AI in the Hollywood writers' strike.
45/
-
If we creative workers are going to pour our resources into a new policy to address the threats that our bosses - and the AI companies they are morally and temperamentally indistinguishable from - represent to our livelihoods, then let that new policy be a renewed sectoral bargaining right for *every* worker. It was sectoral bargaining (a collective, solidaristic right) and not copyright (an individual, commercial right) that saw off AI in the Hollywood writers' strike.
45/
Copyright positions the creative worker as a small business - an LLC with an MFA - bargaining B2B with another firm. To the extent that copyright helps us, it is largely incidental. Sure, we were able to file for a few thousand bucks per book that Anthropic downloaded from a pirate site to train its models on. But Anthropic doesn't have to use a shadow library to get those books - it can just pay our bosses to get them.
46/
-
Copyright positions the creative worker as a small business - an LLC with an MFA - bargaining B2B with another firm. To the extent that copyright helps us, it is largely incidental. Sure, we were able to file for a few thousand bucks per book that Anthropic downloaded from a pirate site to train its models on. But Anthropic doesn't have to use a shadow library to get those books - it can just pay our bosses to get them.
46/
It's *great* that Claude Code's source is online. It's *great* that we have the ability to pore over, analyze and criticize this code, which has become so consequential in so many ways. It's *great* the copyright is weak enough that this is possible (for now).
47/
-
It's *great* that Claude Code's source is online. It's *great* that we have the ability to pore over, analyze and criticize this code, which has become so consequential in so many ways. It's *great* the copyright is weak enough that this is possible (for now).
47/
Expanding copyright will gain little for creative workers, except for a new reason to be angry about how our audiences experience our work. Expanding *labor* rights will gain much, for *every* worker, including our audiences. It's an idea that our bosses - *and* AI hucksters - hate with every fiber of their beings.
eof/
-
Anthropic's developers made an extremely basic configuration error, and as a result, the source-code for Claude Code - the company's flagship coding assistant product - has leaked and is being eagerly analyzed by many parties:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47586778
--
If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
https://pluralistic.net/2026/04/02/limited-monopoly/#petardism
1/
@pluralistic
If Claude scrapped Claude’s source code would he have to take it down? -
Anthropic's developers made an extremely basic configuration error, and as a result, the source-code for Claude Code - the company's flagship coding assistant product - has leaked and is being eagerly analyzed by many parties:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47586778
--
If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
https://pluralistic.net/2026/04/02/limited-monopoly/#petardism
1/
@pluralistic #AI is #clankers
all the way down. -
The company knew its voting machines were defective, that they frequently crashed and lost their vote counts on election night, and that Diebold technicians were colluding with local electoral officials to secretly "estimate" the lost vote totals so that no one would hold either the official or Diebold responsible for these defective machines:
https://www.salon.com/2003/09/23/bev_harris/
10/
@pluralistic there's good reasons why voting machines are illegal in Germany.
-
Anthropic's developers made an extremely basic configuration error, and as a result, the source-code for Claude Code - the company's flagship coding assistant product - has leaked and is being eagerly analyzed by many parties:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47586778
--
If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
https://pluralistic.net/2026/04/02/limited-monopoly/#petardism
1/
@pluralistic so their gawdknowshowmany billions of investment in AI didn't help prevent a basic error?
Doesn't bode well for the "agentic future".
-
R relay@relay.mycrowd.ca shared this topic
