Trump fires head of Copyright Office two days following report that AI training may not be fair use
The Trump administration has reportedly fired Register of Copyrights Shira Perlmutter, who leads the US Copyright Office, following the office’s choice to release a pre-publication version of its opinion on the fair use status of AI training data that’s made up of copyrighted information.
Representative Joe Morelle, the ranking Democrat of the Committee on House Administration, called her firing an “unprecedented power grab with no legal basis,” linking the firing directly to her report, which he says amounted to her refusing “to rubber-stamp Elon Musk’s efforts to mine troves of copyrighted works to train AI models.”
Among the report’s conclusions is that while the fair use status of AI training “will depend on what works were used, from what source, for what purpose, and with what controls on the outputs—all of which can affect the market.” The report says research and scholarship might be fair use but says many other AI tools might not be:
But 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.
University of Colorado law professor Blake Reid called the report a “straight-ticket loss for the AI companies” in a post prior to reports emerged that Perlmutter had been fired, writing that he wondered “if a purge at the Copyright Office is incoming and they felt the need to rush this out.” Reid wrote that although the Copyright Office generally can’t “issue binding interpretations of copyright law,” courts turn to its expertise when drafting their opinions.
Whether the Copyright Office’s release of its findings is the reason Perlmutter was cut loose or is just very curious timing isn’t clear, as the White House doesn’t seem to have commented on it. Copyright law expert Meredith Rose questioned the link, calling the report “113 pages of ‘well, it depends!’” and adding that “people who find that offensive enough to call for her ouster would have to be utter lunatics—on EITHER side of this fight.”
Confusing the issue further, President Trump reposted (or ReTruthed, if you like) commentary on news of Perlmutter’s firing by a Truth Social account attributed to Mike Davis, a former legal clerk for Neil Gorsuch who was rumored last year for Trump’s Attorney General pick.
“Now tech bros are going to attempt to steal creators’ copyrights for AI profits,” Davis wrote while linking to a CBS News story, “This is 100% unacceptable.”
The day the Copyright Office’s report was released, President Trump also fired Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden, whose department the Copyright Office is part of. As NPR reports, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt claimed, without specifics, that Hayden had done “concerning things … in the pursuit of DEI and putting inappropriate books in the library for children.” Every book published in the United States goes into the Library of Congress.
