What initially appeared to be a power play by Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) to take over the US Copyright Office by having Donald Trump remove the officials in charge has now backfired in spectacular fashion, as Trump’s acting replacements are known to be unfriendly — and even downright hostile — to the tech industry.
When Trump fired Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden last week and Register of Copyrights Shira Perlmutter over the weekend, it was seen as another move driven by the tech wing of the Republican Party — especially in light of the Copyright Office releasing a pre-publication report saying some kinds of generative AI training would not be considered fair use. And when two men showed up at the Copyright Office inside the Library of Congress carrying letters purporting to appoint them to acting leadership positions, the DOGE takeover appeared to be complete.
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.
Perkins, now the supposed acting Register of Copyrights, is an eight-year veteran of the DOJ who served in the first Trump administration prosecuting fraud cases. Nieves, the putative acting deputy librarian, is currently at the Office of the Deputy Attorney General, having previously been a lawyer on the House Judiciary Committee, where he worked with Rep. Jim Jordan on Big Tech investigations. And Todd Blanche, the putative Acting Librarian of Congress who would be their boss, is a staunch Trump ally who represented him during his 2024 Manhattan criminal trial, and is now the Deputy Attorney General overseeing the DOJ’s side in the Google Search remedies case. As one government affairs lobbyist told The Verge, Blanche is “there to stick it to tech.”
The appointments of Blanche, Perkins, and Nieves are the result of furious lobbying over the weekend by the conservative content industry — as jealously protective of its copyrighted works as any other media companies — as well as populist Republican lawmakers and lawyers, all enraged that Silicon Valley had somehow persuaded Trump to fire someone who’d recently criticized AI companies.
Sources speaking to The Verge are convinced the firings were a tech industry power play led by Elon Musk and David Sacks
The populists were particularly rankled over Perlmutter’s removal from the helm of the Copyright Office, which happened the day after the agency released a pre-publication version of its report on the use of copyrighted material in training generative AI systems. Sources speaking to The Verge are convinced the firings were a tech industry power play led by Elon Musk and “White House A.I. & Crypto Czar” David Sacks, meant to eliminate any resistance to AI companies using copyrighted material to train models without having to pay for it.
“You can say, well, we have to compete with China. No, we don’t have to steal content to compete with China. We don’t have slave labor to compete with China. It’s a bullshit argument,” Mike Davis, the president of the Article III project and a key antitrust advisor to Trump, told The Verge. “It’s not fair use under the copyright laws to take everyone’s content and have the big tech platforms monetize it. That’s the opposite of fair use. That’s a copyright infringement.”
It’s the rare time that MAGA world is in agreement with the Democratic Party, which has roundly condemned the firings of Hayden and Perlmutter, and also zeroed in on the Musk-Sacks faction as the instigator.
In a press release, Rep. Joe Morelle (D-NY) characterized the hundred-plus-page report, the third installment of a series that the office has put out on copyright and artificial intelligence, as “refus[ing] to rubber-stamp Elon Musk’s efforts to mine troves of copyrighted works to train AI models.” Meanwhile, Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR), who told The Verge in an emailed statement that the president had no power to fire either Hayden or Perlmutter, said, “This all looks like another way to pay back Elon Musk and the other AI billionaires who backed Trump’s campaign.”
The agency’s interpretation of what is or isn’t fair use does not have binding force on the courts
Publications like the AI report essentially lay out how the Copyright Office interprets copyright law. But the agency’s interpretation of what is or isn’t fair use does not have binding force on the courts, so a report like this one functions mostly as expert commentary and reference material. However, the entire AI industry is built on an expansive interpretation of copyright law that’s currently being tested in the courts — a situation that’s created dire need for exactly this sort of expert commentary.
The AI report applies the law of fair use to different kinds of AI training and usage, concluding that although outcomes might differ case by case, “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.” But far from advising drastic action in response to what the Office believes is rampant copyright infringement, the report instead states that “government intervention would be premature at this time,” given that licensing agreements are being made across various sectors.
“Now tech bros are going to steal creators’ copyrights for AI profits”
The unoffending nature of the report made Perlmutter’s removal all the more alarming to the MAGA ideologues in Trump’s inner circle, who saw this as a clear power grab, and were immediately vocal about it. “Now tech bros are going to steal creators’ copyrights for AI profits,” Davis posted immediately on Truth Social, along with a link to a CBS story about Perlmutter’s firing. “This is 100% unacceptable.”
Curiously, just after Davis published the post, Trump reposted it, link and all.
None of Trump’s purported appointees have a particularly relevant background for their new jobs — but they are certainly not DOGE people and, generally speaking, are not the kind of people that generative AI proponents would want in the office. And for now, this counts as a political win for the anti-tech populists, even if nothing further happens. “Sometimes when you make a pitch to leadership to get rid of someone, the person who comes in after isn’t any better,” said a source familiar with the dynamic between the White House and both sides of the copyright issue. “You don’t necessarily get to name the successor and fire someone, and so in many cases, I’ve seen people get pushed out the door and the replacement is even worse.”
The speed of the firings and subsequent power struggle, however, have underscored the brewing constitutional crisis sparked by Trump’s frequent firing of independent agency officials confirmed by Congress. The Library of Congress firings, in particular, reach well past the theory of executive power claimed by the White House and into even murkier territory. It’s legally dubious whether the Librarian of Congress can be removed by the president, as the Library, a legislative branch agency that significantly predates the administrative state, does not fit neatly into the modern-day legal framework of federal agencies. (Of course, everything about the law is in upheaval even where agencies do fit the framework.) Regardless, the law clearly states that the Librarian of Congress — not the president — appoints the Register of Copyrights.
At the moment, the Library of Congress has not received any direction from Congress on how to move forward. The constitutional crisis — one of many across the federal government — remains ongoing.
Elon Musk and xAI did not respond to a request for comment.
Additional reporting by Sarah Jeong.
