Trump Fires Top Copyright Official Days After Terminating Librarian of Congress

President Donald Trump reportedly fired the leader of the United States Copyright Office, Shira Perlmutter, on Saturday.

As Politico reports, the White House informed Perlmutter on Saturday afternoon that she had been terminated and would no longer serve as Register of Copyrights, according to internal Library of Congress communications Politico obtained.

Federal law requires that the Register of Copyrights be appointed by the Librarian of Congress, a position that requires presidential nomination and Senate confirmation to be filled. Last Thursday, the Trump administration fired the Librarian of Congress, Carla Hayden, via a two-sentence email. Hayden was slated to occupy the role until her 10-year term expired in October 2026. Hayden was the first woman and Black person to hold the position.

The timing of Perlmutter’s termination is interesting, to say the least. According to Representative Joe Morelle of New York, the top-ranking Democrat on the House Administration Committee, the congressional body that oversees the Library of Congress and U.S. Copyright Office, Perlmutter’s firing is “no coincidence.”

“Donald Trump’s termination of Register of Copyrights, Shira Perlmutter, is a brazen, unprecedented power grab with no legal basis. 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 said in a statement.

“Register Perlmutter is a patriot, and her tenure has propelled the Copyright Office into the 21st century by comprehensively modernizing its operations and setting global standards on the intersection of AI and intellectual property.

“This action once again tramples on Congress’s Article One authority and throws a trillion-dollar industry into chaos. When will my Republican colleagues decide enough is enough?” 

Earlier this year, the Copyright Office clarified its stance on AI-generated artwork, determining that copyright protection would only be afforded to works with meaningful human authorship, meaning that purely AI-generated works are not eligible for protections.

“Where that creativity is expressed through the use of AI systems, it continues to enjoy protection,” Perlmutter said in late January. “Extending protection to material whose expressive elements are determined by a machine… would undermine rather than further the constitutional goals of copyright.”

Given the timing of Perlmutter’s abrupt termination, many are worried that Elon Musk and his associates are gearing up to train AI models using copyrighted works, a move Perlmutter resisted. All works published in the United States under copyright protection are subject to mandatory deposit, meaning that the Library of Congress possesses a treasure trove of protected artwork. In less than a week, the two women charged with protecting this work have been removed.

Image credits: Header photo licensed via Depositphotos.