Donald Trump has fired a top public servant at the United States’ Library of Congress.
Trump’s sudden removal from office of US Register Of Copyrights, Shira Perlmutter, this weekend brings with it context that could be of great importance – and concern – to the global music business.
Before being fired, Perlmutter was the most senior copyright official in the United States. She was also connected with music industry lobbyists, appearing at events hosted by the National Music Publishers’ Association (NMPA) and others in recent years.
On Friday (May 9), Perlmutter and her team, via the US Copyright Office, issued a pre-publication version of a new report on copyright and artificial intelligence.
The balanced report seemed to take a stance that some tech titans won’t appreciate: training AI on copyrighted songs without licensing likely exceeds ‘fair use’ definitions in the United States.
Indeed, the report said: “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.”
It also directly acknowledged the potential commercial harm to IP rightsholders from unlicensed gen-AI, adding: “If [an AI] model can produce substantially similar outputs that directly substitute for works in the training data, it can lead to lost sales.”
Less than 24 hours after the report became available, on Saturday (May 10), Perlmutter received an email from the White House telling her that her role was being “terminated”, according to Politico.
Subsequent to the firing, Representative Joe Morelle, the top Democrat on the House Administration Committee – which oversees the Library of Congress – said it was “no coincidence [Trump] acted less than a day after [Perlmutter] refused to rubber-stamp Elon Musk’s efforts to mine troves of copyrighted works to train AI models”.
Perlmutter’s dismissal followed the firing of Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden on Thursday.
Legal experts suggest Trump’s firing of Perlmutter may reveal a troubling prioritization of AI advancement over creators’ rights.
Dr. Barry Scannell, of Irish law firm William Fry, noted on LinkedIn: “The timing [of this dismissal] is not subtle.
“[Perlmutter’s] report offered the most detailed and sober government analysis yet of how U.S. copyright law applies to the training of generative AI systems. It acknowledged the complexity of the issue. It accepted that some uses might qualify as fair use.
“But it also warned against assuming that all AI training is exempt from copyright law. It emphasised the economic harm unlicensed training can cause to creators. And it questioned the tech industry’s mantra that more data always means better AI.
“This careful legal balancing act appears to have crossed a political red line.”
Worries will naturally now permeate across the music business that Perlmutter’s dismissal signals the Trump administration may be prioritizing AI development at the expense of creators’ rights.
Several major music rightsholders, both individually and via the RIAA, have already filed lawsuits against AI companies for using copyrighted materials without permission.
As Music Business Worldwide recently reported, OpenAI has been actively lobbying the Trump administration to weaken copyright protections that would benefit AI companies at the expense of creators.
