Maria A. Pallante, CEO and president of the Association of American Publishers, speaks in the association’s 2025 annual meeting on May 8. Image: AAP, Publishing Perspectives
By Porter Anderson, Editor-in-Chief | @Porter_Anderson
See also: AAP’s Annual Meeting: Stark Comment on AI and Copyright
AI, Copyright, and Publishing’s Battle
As many in the States discovered on social media over the weekend, the Donald Trump administration fired the head of the Library of Congress, Carla Hayden, in a two-line email that the Washington Post’s Sophia Nguyen and Herb Scribner reported was two sentences long and without a rationale, saying, simply, “Your position as the Librarian of Congress is terminated effective immediately.”“Notwithstanding the stress of the last few days, I think we have to take a long view about the mission and well-being of the Copyright Office.”Maria A. Pallante, AAP
Quickly following came the news of another firing—that of the chief of the US Copyright Office, Shira Perlmutter—accounts agreeing that her own emailed dismissal, similarly terse, had arrived on Saturday.
At the Associated Press, Matt O’Brien writes, “Perlmutter’s office recently released a report examining whether artificial intelligence companies can use copyrighted materials to ‘train’ their AI systems and then compete in the same market as the human-made works they were trained on. The report, the third part of a lengthy AI study, follows a review that Perlmutter began in 2023 with opinions from thousands of people including AI developers, actors, and country singers.”
Not unexpectedly, political channels on the liberal side lit up with a fresh round of anger in response to the firing of Perlmutter. Steve Benen’s write for MSNBC quoted Rep. Joe Morelle (D-NY25) saying that “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.”
The timing of both these firings—regardless of how one might interpret their political intent—may have struck some who participated in Thursday’s (May 9) Association of American Publishers (AAP) annual meeting. As we reported, the meeting included some starkly straightforward commentary on the association leadership’s concerns about Big Tech’s AI training using unlicensed copyrighted work.
Cleanly and forcefully enunciated comments from AAP president and CEO Maria A. Pallante, from HarperCollins CEO Brian Murray, and from several specialists in a panel discussion of the issue made it clear that the generative AI threat is seen as today’s top concern to “the fundamental and foundational protection of copyright” and thus to the publishing industry, itself.
Pallante on the US Copyright and Administration Actions
One thing Pallante referenced on Thursday—before the firings—was policy questions that remain unsettled in the United States, even as in the United Kingdom, the House of Lords today (May 12) took a stand on the proposed “Data Bill” requiring AI companies to specify what copyrighted material they can use, as reported by Dan Milmo and Raphael Boyd at The Guardian.
“The current White House is an important point of engagement for AAP,” Pallante said, “because president Trump’s Action Plan, expected in July, will influence the global framework for AI policy. We are hopeful. The United States has proven time and again that intellectual property and technology are symbiotic superpowers.”
We asked Pallante for her further thoughts following the news of these firings. A former register of copyright, herself (the role later held by Perlmutter), Pallante is an especially astute observer of the positioning of this and other intellectual property issues. We’re glad to have her statement, provided at our request, and appreciate the turnaround of this to us on, clearly, a difficult Monday.
Pallante says by email to Publishing Perspectives:
“Notwithstanding the stress of the last few days, I think we have to take a long view about the mission and well-being of the Copyright Office because it is important for many reasons, not only nonpartisan reports on major issues, but also examining and registering copyright interests which provide important legal benefits under US law. We don’t really know what’s next, but much of the IP marketplace depends on the Copyright Office services as well as copyright law.
“So far, it has been Big Tech, not the White House, making anti-copyright statements, and as AAP has said publicly, intellectual property and technology are twin superpowers that work best when they work together.”Maria A. Pallante, AAP“That said, the [White House] administration has a right to appoint its own people, subject to Senate confirmation, to the posts that belong to the president. That includes the position of librarian of congress but not register of copyrights (the head of the Copyright Office), who is a legislative branch employee and by the terms of the Copyright Act is appointed by and works under “the librarian’s general direction and supervision.” (Section 701 of the Copyright Act.)
“As a practical matter, Congress has been heavily involved in helping to vet people to run the Copyright Office, sometimes in consultation with the White House. The president’s team today announced an acting librarian and an acting register—the latter causing some confusion. The Congress is aware and seems to be fractured along party lines on its response.
“Is it all related to the Copyright Office’s AI report? It might be but we’ll have to see. So far, it has been Big Tech, not the White House, making anti-copyright statements, and as AAP has said publicly, intellectual property and technology are twin superpowers that work best when they work together.
“I have read the [former] register’s pre-publication report a couple of times and I do think it’s vintage Copyright Office—comprehensive, fair, and helpful to anyone who wants to know existing law, stakeholder opinions across all sectors, and the role of markets in copyright law—but by no means will all of us agree with everything it says.
“Meanwhile, Register Perlmutter is an accomplished copyright attorney and she should be very proud of her service to both the rights holder and user communities during her tenure.”
More from Publishing Perspectives on copyright is here, more on issues in artificial intelligence is here, and more on the work of the Association of American Publishers is here. Publishing Perspectives is the International Publishers Association’s world media partner.