President Trump's acting leaders for the Copyright Office are hostile to the tech industry and not the kind of people that generative AI proponents would want
The leadership upheaval follows the administration’s dismissal of Copyright Office head Shira Perlmutter, after her office raised concerns about copyrighted material in AI training. The acting appointments make the office’s stance on that dispute more consequential for AI companies and rightsholders.
Generative-AI developers and copyright owners must contend with an acting Copyright Office leadership team portrayed as more skeptical of the tech industry, increasing the immediate importance of the office’s views on training-data copyright.
The removal of Perlmutter and transition to acting leadership interrupt continuity at the office while its prior work had already put AI training and copyright in direct conflict.
Second-order effects
AI companies may need to put more weight on licensing, legal-risk assessment, and engagement with copyright stakeholders if the office’s leadership continues to challenge industry-friendly assumptions about training data.
The episode complicates efforts to treat a deregulatory government agenda as uniformly favorable to AI: copyright policy can produce pressure on developers even when other parts of the administration seek technology-sector alignment.
Third-order effects
If political appointments repeatedly reshape copyright-policy leadership, access to copyrighted training material could become a more variable, administration-dependent input for AI development.
The longer contest is over whether generative AI’s content supply is governed chiefly through market licensing or through expansive claims of permissible use; the office’s leadership is becoming a visible institutional lever in that contest.
The trend: AI policy is increasingly being set through control of key administrative institutions, with copyright governance emerging as a constraint on the industry’s content-commercialization model.
I've thought for a bit that there are 3 parts to Trump world w/ possibly divergent interests: Musk/DOGE, the “punishing what we don't like” wing, & exec power maximalists. Who knew the illustration of this would involve...leg branch entities' appointment authorities? www.theverg…
Scoop/twist in the Library of Congress/Copyright Office firings: Trump's replacement appointees aren't from DOGE. — They're DOJ officials backed by MAGA copyright hawks, who are steamed that the tech right undercut them to get a generative AI critic fired. — www.theverge.com/…
i really like the way this Verge story contextualizes DOGE's attack on the LOC within the distinct, and longer-running, attack on the administrative state being carried out by unitary executive theorists and the Supreme Court — www.theverge.com/politics/666... [image]
www.theverge.com/politics/666... But those two men, Paul Perkins and Brian Nieves, were not DOGE at all, but instead approved by the MAGA wing of the Trump coalition that aims to put tech companies in check.
This is why I said “I have no clue!” to the reporters who asked me to comment on the Copyright Office purge and the AI report. — The political motivations behind the publicly visible parts of the drama were not obvious, and we still don't have the full story. — www.theverge.c…
SCOOP from @tinanguyen.bsky.social: Elon's copyright coup attempt blew up after furious MAGA backlash to having AI companies train on content without paying for it www.theverge.com/politics/666...
the weirdness at the Copyright Office intensifies, with both Dems and MAGA pointing fingers at Elon Musk for the firing of Shira Perlmutter, and identifying the AI report as the reason www.theverge.com/politics/666...
“It's not fair use under the copyright laws to take everyone's content & have the big tech platforms monetize it. That's the opposite of fair use. That's a copyright infringement.” —Mike Davis, President of the Article III project & a key Trump advisor https://www.theverge.com/..…
The Verge comes in with a massive scoop on the backstory reporting it was Musk - and Sacks - behind the scenes trying to blow up IP to train AI on behalf of his allies. This wouldn't be a surprise to anyone. /1 [image]
Oh god I hope this is true. According to The Verge: - Musk/Sacks got Perlmutter fired due to AI & copyright report - Conservative content industry were livid, lobbied heavily - Interim appointments at Library of Congress / Copyright Office end up being people “downright [image]