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The Trump administration has reportedly fired Register of Copyrights Shira Perlmutter, who leads the US Copyright Office, following the office\u2019s choice<\/a> to release a pre-publication version<\/a> of its opinion on the fair use status of AI training data that\u2019s made up of copyrighted information. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n Representative Joe Morelle, the ranking Democrat of the Committee on House Administration, called her firing<\/a> an \u201cunprecedented power grab with no legal basis,\u201d linking the firing directly to her report, which he says amounted to her refusing \u201cto rubber-stamp Elon Musk\u2019s efforts to mine troves of copyrighted works to train AI models.\u201d <\/p>\n<\/div>\n Among the report\u2019s conclusions is that while the fair use status of AI training \u201cwill depend on what works were used, from what source, for what purpose, and with what controls on the outputs\u2014all of which can affect the market.\u201d The report says research and scholarship might be fair use but says many other AI tools might not be: <\/p>\n<\/div>\n But making commercial use of vast troves of copyrighted works to produce expressive content that competes with them in existing markets, especially where this is accomplished through illegal access, goes beyond established fair use boundaries. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n University of Colorado law professor Blake Reid called the report a \u201cstraight-ticket loss for the AI companies\u201d in a post<\/a> prior to reports emerged that Perlmutter had been fired, writing that he wondered \u201cif a purge at the Copyright Office is incoming and they felt the need to rush this out.\u201d Reid wrote<\/a> that although the Copyright Office generally can\u2019t \u201cissue binding interpretations of copyright law,\u201d courts turn to its expertise when drafting their opinions.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Whether the Copyright Office\u2019s release of its findings is the reason Perlmutter was cut loose or is just very curious timing isn\u2019t clear, as the White House doesn\u2019t seem to have commented on it. Copyright law expert Meredith Rose questioned the link<\/a>, calling the report \u201c113 pages of \u2018well, it depends!\u2019\u201d and adding that \u201cpeople who find that offensive enough to call for her ouster would have to be utter lunatics\u2014on EITHER side of this fight.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cNow tech bros are going to attempt to steal creators\u2019 copyrights for AI profits,\u201d Davis wrote while linking to a CBS News<\/em> story<\/a>, \u201cThis is 100% unacceptable.\u201d <\/p>\n<\/div>\n The day the Copyright Office\u2019s report was released, President Trump also fired Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden, whose department the Copyright Office is part of. As NPR <\/em>reports<\/a>, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt claimed, without specifics, that Hayden had done \u201cconcerning things \u2026 in the pursuit of DEI and putting inappropriate books in the library for children.\u201d Every book published in the United States goes into the Library of Congress.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n