Washington – The Trump administration has fired the main copyright official of the Nation, Shira Perlmutterdays later abruptly termination The head of the Congress Library, which supervises the United States copyright office.
The office said in a statement on Sunday that Perlmutter received an email from the White House a day before with the notification that “its position as copyright registration and director of the United States copyright office is immediately immediately.”
On Thursday, President Donald Trump dismissed Congress librarian Carla Hayden, the first woman and the first African American to be a librarian of Congress, as part of the ongoing administration purge of government officials perceived that they opposed the president and his agenda.
Hayden appointed Perlmutter to direct the copyright office in October 2020.
Recently published Perlmutter office A report Examine whether artificial intelligence companies can use copyright materials to “train” their AI systems and then compete in the same market as the works done by humans in which they were trained.
The report, the third part of a long AI study, follows a review that Perlmutter began in 2023 with opinions of thousands of people, including AI developers, actors and field singers.
In January, the office He clarified his approach As one based on the “centrality of human creativity” in the authorization of a work that guarantees copyright protections. The office receives about half a million copyright requests per year that cover millions of creative works.
“Where this creativity is expressed through the use of AI systems, continues to enjoy protection,” Perlmutter said in January. “Extending the protection of the material whose expressive elements are determined by a machine … they would undermine instead of promoting the constitutional objectives of copyright.”
The White House did not return a message in search of comments on Sunday.
The Democrats rushed to fire Perlmutter’s dismissal.
“Donald Trump’s termination for copyright registration, Shira Perlmutter, is a shameless power and unprecedented power without legal basis,” said representative Joe Morelle in New York, the main democrat of the Chamber Administration Committee.
Perlmutter, who has a law title, was previously a policy director at the Office of Patents and Trademarks and worked on copyright and other intellectual property areas. He also previously worked at the copyright office at the end of the 1990s. She did not return the messages that left on Sunday.
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Associated Press writer Sophia Tareen contributed to this Chicago report.
