WASHINGTON (AP) — Shira Perlmutter, the leading copyright official in the U.S., has been dismissed by the Trump administration shortly after the unexpected removal of the Library of Congress’s head, which manages the U.S. Copyright Office.
The office released a statement on Sunday saying that Perlmutter was informed via email from the White House the previous day, stating, “your role as the Register of Copyrights and Director of the U.S. Copyright Office has been immediately terminated.”
Earlier on Thursday, President Donald Trump also dismissed Carla Hayden, the first female and African American to hold the position of Librarian of Congress. This action is part of the administration’s continual effort to remove government officials thought to be in opposition to the president’s 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.
__
Associated Press writer Sophia Tareen contributed to this report from Chicago.
