Dale Nelson Authors Forbes Piece on Politicial Turmoil Facing the Copyright Office
Dale Nelson recently penned an article in Forbes entitled “Trump’s Firings Test Separation Of Powers–and Copyright Law,” unpacking the methods utilized by the second Trump administration to target copyright law, and the concerns it could pose for authors, artists, and filmmakers.
Dale explains that the string of recent events began when the Librarian of Congress, who oversees the U.S. Copyright Office, was terminated without a provided reason on May 8. Two days later, the administration also abruptly fired Shira Perlmutter, the Register of Copyrights and Director of the Copyright Office. Although Perlmutter sued the Trump administration and asked for a temporary restraining order (TRO) to be reinstated in her role, her request was denied.
Dale writes that although the issue central to this lawsuit arises from the executive branch’s authority to terminate these positions, she views the risk this poses to creatives as more consequential.
“If the executive branch can control the leadership and the functioning of the Copyright Office, this could put copyright creators – such as authors, filmmakers, photographers and fine artists – at risk of having their works and creations put at the behest of political ideologies, rather than within the proper boundaries of copyright law,” she argues.
Dale adds that many view Perlmutter’s termination as retaliatory, given that the Copyright Office released their third report exploring central issues within AI and copyright law just one day prior to her firing.
“In that report, the Copyright Office said that many uses of training AI with copyrighted materials would be viewed as fair use (and thus not requiring the permission of the copyright owners), noting that outputs from using AI research or analysis systems likely won’t serve as market replacements for the creative works used to train the models,” she explains.