Trump administration fires top copyright official days after firing
Librarian of Congress
[May 12, 2025]
By MATT O'BRIEN
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump administration has fired the nation’s top
copyright official, Shira Perlmutter, days after abruptly terminating
the head of the Library of Congress, which oversees the U.S. Copyright
Office.
The office said in a statement Sunday that Perlmutter received an email
from the White House a day earlier with the notification that “your
position as the Register of Copyrights and Director at the U.S.
Copyright Office is terminated effective immediately.”
On Thursday, President Donald Trump fired Librarian of Congress Carla
Hayden, the first woman and the first African American to be librarian
of Congress, as part of the administration's ongoing purge of government
officials perceived to oppose the president and his agenda.
Hayden named Perlmutter to lead the Copyright Office in October 2020.
Perlmutter’s office recently released a report examining whether
artificial intelligence companies can use copyrighted materials to
“train” their AI systems and then compete in the same market as the
human-made works they were trained on.
The report, the third part of a lengthy AI study, follows a review that
Perlmutter began in 2023 with opinions from thousands of people
including AI developers, actors and country singers.
In January, the office clarified its approach as one based on the
“centrality of human creativity” in authoring a work that warrants
copyright protections. The office receives about half a million
copyright applications per year covering millions of creative works.
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Shira Perlmutter, Register of Copyrights and Director of the U.S.
Copyright Office, testifies during a Senate Judiciary Subcommittee
on Intellectual Property oversight hearing of the United States
Copyright Office, Nov. 13, 2024, on Capitol Hill in Washington. (AP
Photo/Mariam Zuhaib, file)
“Where that creativity is expressed through the use of AI systems,
it continues to enjoy protection,” Perlmutter said in January.
“Extending protection to material whose expressive elements are
determined by a machine ... would undermine rather than further the
constitutional goals of copyright.”
The White House didn’t return a message seeking comment Sunday.
Democrats were quick to blast Perlmutter's firing.
“Donald Trump’s termination of Register of Copyrights, Shira
Perlmutter, is a brazen, unprecedented power grab with no legal
basis,” said Rep. Joe Morelle of New York, the top Democrat on the
House Administration Committee.
Perlmutter, who holds a law degree, was previously a policy director
at the Patent and Trademark Office and worked on copyright and other
areas of intellectual property. She also previously worked at the
Copyright Office in the late 1990s. She did not return messages left
Sunday.
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Associated Press writer Sophia Tareen contributed to this report
from Chicago.
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