What Is Going On With the Chaos At the Copyright Office?

Two weeks ago, on May 8, the Trump Administration dismissed Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden; then, two days later, Register of Copyrights Shira Perlmutter, alarming rightsholders that the White House would try to make it easier for AI companies to train their software on unlicensed copyrighted material.

The Trump Administration hasn’t said much about this, and the situation has only become weirder. The following week (May 12), Wired reported that two Trump appointees were blocked from entering the Copyright Office, and left voluntarily after Library of Congress staffers contacted the Capitol Police. As recently as January 2024, remember, the New York Times referred to the agency — erroneously and rather obnoxiously — as “the sleepy Copyright Office.”

Now, amid disagreements about the process to replace Hayden and Perlmutter, the latter, who is on administrative leave, just filed a lawsuit (on May 22) claiming that the Trump Administration has no right to replace Hayden or dismiss her, and asking for an injunction to restore her role as Register. At the same time, the Trump Administration’s “Big, Beautiful Bill,” which passed the House of Representatives on May 22, contains language that would drastically limit enforcement of state-level AI regulations, including those that would protect artists’ name, image and likeness rights. If the bill passes the Senate intact, assuming the federal government has the power to limit state laws without making its own, this would represent a serious giveaway to the technology sector. Considered together with Perlmutter’s dismissal, it suggests that the Trump Administration may try to give AI companies a pass to ignore creators rights — along with those of other people.

It’s tough to know this is true, of course, because the Administration still hasn’t said much about dismissing Hayden and Perlmutter — a White House explanation about Hayden “putting inappropriate books in the library for children” is absurd, since the Library of Congress is a research institution. Troublingly, the move to dismiss both officials seems to have been sparked by an April 17 American Accountability Foundation report on “Liberals of the Library of Congress.” (The organization is a political nonprofit run by Tom Jones, a former Capitol Hill staffer with a background in opposition research who did not respond to a request for comment.) The report makes for a thin meal. Both Hayden and Perlmutter are registered Democrats who each donated less than $15,000 to national candidates over the last two decades. Hayden, who is Black, “participated in a roundtable on DEI” and moderated a conference of the American Library Association, which is portrayed, with considerable exaggeration, as a group of far-left radicals. Perlmutter, who served in the US Patent and Trademark Office under the first Trump administration and is widely respected for her expertise, “is part of a left-wing family,” according to the report. If this makes her unfit for public office, so is Stephen Miller.

It is possible that the Trump Administration simply could not bring itself to tolerate a Register of Copyrights with siblings who criticized the president online. But it’s also possible that some of the technology companies that have influence in the White House want a Copyright Office that will be more compliant. In March, the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz responded to a request for public comments on the White House AI Action Plan by saying that “neither the Copyright Office nor any other government agency should release guidance related to this issue — or other issues critical to American competitiveness in AI — until the conclusion of the National AI Action Plan process.” In other words, we would prefer new rules to those that exist now.

Or perhaps no rules at all? Technology companies often push for legislation that allows them to avoid other laws or liability: The “safe harbor” from liability in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act; Section 230 of the Communications Act, which gives them immunity from liability for user content; and the Internet Tax Freedom Act. The current version of the “Big, Beautiful Bill” — which I can’t even type without laughing and crying at the same time — could be even worse. It would block enforcement of all current and future local and state laws on AI, including the Tennessee ELVIS ACT (Ensuring Likeness Voice and Image Security Act), which protects artists from AI imitations; and the California AI Transparency Act, which requires big AI companies to identify what has been created by AI tools. Music would only be the beginning, of course. Would this act also forbid the enforcement of laws preventing AI systems from engaging in illegal discrimination? (It’s not clear.) What about deepfake porn?

Although the moratorium on state AI law enforcement would only last for 10 years, laws to protect technology companies can stick around, as what was intended to be an initial boost for an important sector of the economy slowly becomes the status quo. Look at the Internet Tax Freedom Act, passed in 1998 to last a decade, then extended several times and made permanent in 2016. The issues involved in AI will be far more profound, of course, not least because some of those systems might be able to outthink their creators within a decade or two. Imagine creating systems that will soon become smarter than humans, then purposefully making them harder to regulate. This sounds less like legislation than the first act of a Syfy disaster movie. The third won’t be pretty.

Copyright has always been one of the few remaining bipartisan issues in Washington, and Democrats who champion the arts — and, often, the media business — join forces with Republicans who see copyright as a property right worth protecting. Opposing copyright, and online regulation in general, has become a bipartisan issue as well, though. Before Elon Musk had way too much power in the Trump Administration, former Google CEO Eric Schmidt had too much power in the Obama Administration. Now, with Republicans controlling all three branches of government, the political fight over the future of the Copyright Office will take place mostly within the GOP, with MAGA-friendly “tech bros” on one side and more traditional business-focused Republicans on the other.

That is, if Perlmutter doesn’t get the injunction she’s asking for in her lawsuit. Essentially, the President has the power to appoint the Librarian of Congress, who is then confirmed by the Senate. The Librarian then has the power to appoint, or dismiss, the Register. Without a replacement Librarian, Perlmutter argues, “the President’s attempt to remove Ms. Perlmutter was unlawful and ineffective.” This makes sense, but the Trump Administration has taken an expansive view of presidential power, to say the least, and we are now in uncharted territory. And not in a good way.

Even if Perlmutter wins, the Trump Administration will eventually appoint a new Librarian, who will in turn hire a new Register. The question is, who and when? And, more urgently, what happens until then — different people show up and say they have jobs, only to be turned away? That sounds pretty chaotic. Perhaps the chaos is the point, though. The more the Trump Administration interferes with the basic machinery of government — the endless list of federal agencies known by initials, rather than names — the easier it is to argue that all of this is part of a problem, not a solution. And that could be the biggest problem of all.