GA Congressman Hank Johnson’s statement on abrupt firing of Shira Perlmutter, Register of Copyrights

Congressman Hank Johnson (GA-04), the top Democrat on the Judiciary Subcommittee on Courts, Intellectual Property, Artificial Intelligence and the Internet, issued the following statement after Register of Copyrights and Director of the U.S. Copyright Office, Shira Perlmutter, was fired over the weekend by President Trump – days after he fired now-former Librarian of Congress, Dr. Carla Hayden:

“President Trump’s firing of the Register of Copyrights, Shira Perlmutter, is yet another power grab from an administration that has repeatedly violated the Constitution and our country’s rule of law. Register Perlmutter is an accomplished and respected expert who led the Copyright Office with distinction. 

We should also recognize the clear benefit to Elon Musk and other artificial intelligence CEOs, who are in litigation over their use of copyrighted material to train their generative AI systems. It’s no mistake that just hours before she was fired, the Copyright Office issued a report assessing the nature of the fair use doctrine as applied to its use in training large language models.”