Photo Credit: Shira Perlmutter, the 14th Register of Copyrights, by David Rice
President Trump has fired Shira Perlmutter, who heads the US Copyright Office as the 14th Register of Copyrights. The news was reported by several outlets and confirmed by Democratic Representative Joe Morelle on the Committee for House Administration.
Perlmutter took her position back in 2020 during the first Trump administration, and was appointed by Librarian of Congress, Carla Hayden. Hayden was also fired by Trump this week.
“Donald Trump’s termination of Register of Copyrights, Shira Perlmutter, is a brazen, unprecedented power grab with no legal basis,” said Morelle. “It is surely no coincidence he acted less than a day after she refused to rubber-stamp Elon Musk’s efforts to mine troves of copyrighted works to train AI models.”
Morelle also linked to a pre-publication draft of a US Copyright Office report released last week—the third part in a longer report—that focuses on copyright and artificial intelligence. The report outlines that, while each case’s outcome cannot be pre-judged, there are limitations on the amount that AI companies can count on “fair use” as a defense when training their large language models (LLMs) on copyrighted work.
“Making commercial use of vast troves of copyrighted works to produce expressive content that competes with them in existing markets, especially where this is accomplished through illegal access, goes beyond established fair use boundaries,” the report reads, pointing out that research and analysis use cases would probably still be allowed.
AI companies, including OpenAI, are under fire with numerous lawsuits accusing them of copyright infringement. OpenAI has asked the US government to codify a “copyright strategy” that would provide AI companies with extra wiggle room regarding fair use. The Copyright Office’s recent report suggests that won’t be happening the way the companies may have hoped—but Trump may hope to change that with his onslaught of firings.
“Now tech bros are going to attempt to steal creators’ copyrights for AI profits. This is 100% unacceptable,” wrote attorney Mike Davis on a post on Trump’s Truth Social, linking to CBS News’ coverage of the firing. Strangely, Trump “ReTruthed” the post, despite the fact Davis appeared to be criticizing the move.
“Tech bro” and Trump ally Elon Musk is both a co-founder of OpenAI and that of a competing company, xAI, which is merging with the former Twitter. He has expressed support for Square founder Jack Dorsey’s call to “delete all IP law.”
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