Shift in U.S. Copyright Office: Shira Perlmutter has been fired
In an America increasingly divided between technological innovation and the protection of creativity, Shira Perlmutter represented a voice of balance until her sudden dismissal.
Leading the Copyright Office since 2020, this legal expert with a background at the Patent and Trademark Office found herself at the center of a conflict with increasingly political contours.
Her tenure at the U.S. Copyright Office was marked by the growing challenge of artificial intelligence. As major tech companies advanced in the AI race, Perlmutter sought to draw clear boundaries. She launched an ambitious consultation project in 2023, listening to thousands of voices from Silicon Valley developers to Broadway artists, searching for a path that could reconcile innovation and protection.
The principle guiding her work was simple yet powerful: “the centrality of human creativity.” A vision that didn’t reject technological progress but placed precise limits on the indiscriminate exploitation of copyrighted works.
As I analyzed in my article “The Evolution of Hybrid Copyright,” under Perlmutter’s direction, the Copyright Office developed a sophisticated ‘hybrid copyright’ (a term I proudly originated, though I’m still waiting for that copyright approval) doctrine – an approach that goes beyond simple binary distinctions to embrace a more nuanced understanding of creative processes. The emblematic case of “Zarya of the Dawn” in 2023 marked the beginning of this doctrinal journey, which then evolved toward greater sophistication in evaluating human contribution, as demonstrated by the subsequent “Rose Enigma” case. Both works were from Kris Kashtanova, demonstrating a unique progression in copyright theory through a single author’s creative development.
Perlmutter managed to guide this legal transformation with rare balance, recognizing on one hand the need to protect human creativity and on the other the importance of adapting to technological change. Her ability to preserve the fundamental principles of copyright -particularly the requirement of human authorship- while adapting to technological evolution, suggests a sustainable path for copyright law in the AI era.
This balance inevitably put Shira Perlmutter on a collision course with powerful interests. Her last act, that 100-page report questioning the use of protected works to train AI systems, giving voice to countless authors worldwide, became the symbol of this battle.
“Commercial use of vast archives of protected works to produce content that competes with them in existing markets goes beyond established fair use boundaries” she wrote in the report, openly challenging the business model underpinning many of the promises of generative AI and giving one of her most important speeches while providing key legal arguments for many of the lawsuits now making their way through the courts—including prominent cases such as Authors Guild v. OpenAI, Thomson Reuters v. ROSS Intelligence, and lawsuits brought by The New York Times, Getty Images and various music publishers against AI companies
It’s not surprising that Democratic Representative Joe Morelle linked her dismissal to the “refusal to rubber-stamp Elon Musk’s efforts” in this field. The proximity between the technology magnate and the Trump administration is well-known, as is Musk’s position who last month declared himself in favor of abolishing intellectual property law.
The American Accountability Foundation had already pointed the finger at Perlmutter, labeling her as part of the “deep state liberals” to be purged.
Her dismissal represents not only the end of her career at the Copyright Office but could also mark a turning point in the hybrid copyright doctrine that I have analyzed in my work, pointing toward a phenomenon I have been -sadly- predicting in the last 15 years: the end of copyright as we know it.
