XPost: alt.government.employees, alt.politics.usa.congress, talk.politics.guns XPost: sac.politics, talk.politics.misc
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump administration has fired the nation’s top
copyright official , Shira Perlmutter, days after abruptly terminating the
head of the Library of Congress, which oversees the U.S. Copyright Office.
The office said in a statement Sunday that Perlmutter received an email
from the White House a day earlier with the notification that “your
position as the Register of Copyrights and Director at the U.S. Copyright Office is terminated effective immediately.”
On Thursday, President Donald Trump fired Librarian of Congress Carla
Hayden, the first woman and the first African American to be librarian of Congress, as part of the administration's ongoing purge of government
officials perceived to oppose the president and his agenda.
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. The report, the third part of a lengthy AI study,
follows a review that 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 also worked at the Copyright
Office in the late 1990s. She did not return messages left Sunday.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/trump-administration-fires-top- copyright-official-days-after-firing-librarian-of-congress/ar-AA1Ezw6Y
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