WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump administration has dismissed Shira Perlmutter, the nation’s leading copyright official, just days after unexpectedly removing the head of the Library of Congress, which manages the U.S. Copyright Office.
The office announced in a Sunday statement that Perlmutter received an email from the White House a day before, informing her 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 dismissed Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden, the first woman and African American in the role, as part of the administration’s continuous removal of government officials who are seen as opposing the president and his policies.
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.
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Associated Press writer Sophia Tareen contributed to this report from Chicago.
