Copyright Office Targeted
Now, they've come for the librarians and our copyrights
Yes, librarians, you have been tagged as part of the “deep state” — that imaginary collection of civil servants and fellow citizens working to fulfill their oaths to the Constitution, various laws enacted by Congress, and their professional obligations.
You’ve been labeled as such by the American Accountability Foundation (AAF), an alt-right foundation established in 2021 and run by Tom Jones (far from that one), a former Legislative Director for Senator Ron Johnson and hatchet man for Ted Cruz.
With only $160K in the bank and one employee as of 2023 (Jones), the group has been able to get the Librarian of Congress and the head of the US Copyright Office fired in short order.
The Congressional Black Caucus was quick to respond to the firing of the Librarian of Congress, Carla Hayden, the first woman and Black appointed to the position, with Yvette Clarke (D-NY), chair of the caucus, saying:
This decision is the latest move in the Trump Administration’s ongoing war against truth and our democratic values. To make matters worse, the administration will likely attempt to replace Dr. Hayden with an unqualified sycophant who is more committed to Donald Trump than the independence of the institution.
Adding to the sense of sexism or just plain bigotry was the AAF posting on social media, “It’s time to get her OUT and hire a new guy for the job!” The idea of Marco Rubio taking on this duty was floated.
The last time an incoming president replaced the Librarian of Congress was in 1861. That’s not a reassuring historical echo.
Shira Perlmutter, Register of Copyrights and Director of the US Copyright Office, was fired via email Sunday. Her termination comes after her office released a report this month that raised concerns about using copyrighted materials to train AI.
This may all have been done as part of an effort to remove barriers to pooling information for AI training, an explicit goal of Elon Musk and others in the Trump Administration.
Joe Morelle (D-NY) issued a statement making this accusation explicitly:
Donald Trump’s termination of Register of Copyrights, Shira Perlmutter, is a brazen, unprecedented power grab with no legal basis. It is surely no coincidence he acted less than a day after she refused to rubber-stamp Elon Musk’s efforts to mine troves of copyrighted works to train AI models.
Register Perlmutter is a patriot, and her tenure has propelled the Copyright Office into the 21st century by comprehensively modernizing its operations and setting global standards on the intersection of AI and intellectual property.
This action once again tramples on Congress’s Article One authority and throws a trillion-dollar industry into chaos. When will my Republican colleagues decide enough is enough?
Copyright is a right enshrined in the Constitution because it is a natural right for creators to have the ability to benefit from their creations. Attacking copyright is akin to attacking democracy, which fits with the playbook of these techno-fascists.
Undermining copyright is a predictable part of the cyberlibertarian playbook and part of what ties Big Tech, Creative Commons, and therefore OA to the rise in fascism, as David Golumbia wrote in his book — Cyberlibertarianism: The Right-Wing Politics of Digital Technology:
Copyright may well be the signal cyberlibertarian issue. Mentioned in all the founding documents, hallowed in slogans and battle cries, few causes have rallied universal outrage so long as has copyright. . . .
In the 2020s, we have learned just how vital to democracy it is for societies to have some mechanisms by which we develop some shared sense of what real history and real science and real knowledge look like, and how democracy relies on them for its very existence. Digital media tells us it is vital to that project, too, yet evidence continually shows us the opposite: that the institutions and methods we relied on for democracies to function are specifically what digital media destroys.
Libraries and librarians have become a target for a variety of bad reasons this year, facing potential jail time for having certain books in circulation and with funding cuts across the board.
When will we decide enough is enough?
Coming in the Spring of 2026
