Trump fires head of the Copyright Office who crossed the road to Musk

By: Viktor Tsyrfa | 12.05.2025, 09:39
Trump fires head of the Copyright Office who crossed the road to Musk Shira Perlmutter. Source: journal.law.upenn.edu

US President Donald Trump has reportedly fired the director of the US Copyright Office, Shira Perlmutter. Last week, the US Copyright Office issued a major report partially supporting content creators and raising concerns about how artificial intelligence systems use copyrighted material in their learning.

Perlmutter, who is regarded as an experienced and moderate lawyer, has been in office since 2020, during Trump's first term.

What's going on behind the scenes?

Rumour has it that the reason is political. Democrats are openly saying that the decision, made a day after she prevented Elon Musk from using copyrighted texts to train his AI model, is political persecution and abuse of power. There are also suspicions that the decision is linked to Trump's political rhetoric - in particular, his criticism of institutions that he considers hostile to "free speech" or "media control".

In fact, Elon Musk was not the only one to advocate the use of copyrighted content in AI training. Most creators of large-scale language models (LLMs) have also supported this decision. Their main argument is that if they don't do it, NATO troops will do it tomorrow, and their creations will fall behind Chinese AI models that don't put American copyright in the same category. Opponents, on the other hand, point out that the actual abolition of copyright will deal an irreparable blow to intellectual property and slow down the creation of unique content. And although Perlmutter herself is still silent, this story will obviously have a high-profile sequel.

Source: gizmodo.com