Trump administration fires top copyright official days after firing Librarian of Congress

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 US Copyright Office.

The office said in a statement yesterday (11 May) 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 US 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.

"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.