US Copyright Office found AI companies sometimes breach copyright. Next day its boss was fired
- Reference: 1747031532
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2025/05/12/us_copyright_office_ai_copyright/
- Source link:
The office’s opinion on fair use came in a draft of the third part of its report on copyright and artificial intelligence. The first part considered digital replicas and the second tackled whether it is possible to copyright the output of generative AI.
The office published the [1]draft [PDF] of Part 3, which addresses the use of copyrighted works in the development of generative AI systems, on May 9th.
Copyright-ignoring AI scraper bots laugh at robots.txt so the IETF is trying to improve it [2]READ MORE
The draft notes that generative AI systems “draw on massive troves of data, including copyrighted works” and asks: “Do any of the acts involved require the copyright owners’ consent or compensation?”
That question is the subject of [3]several lawsuits , because developers of AI models have admitted to training their products on content scraped from the internet and other sources without compensating content creators or copyright owners. AI companies have argued fair use provisions of copyright law mean they did no wrong.
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As the report notes, one test courts use to determine fair use considers “the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work”. If a judge finds an AI company’s use of copyrighted material doesn’t impact a market or value, fair use will apply.
[5]
[6]
The report finds AI companies can’t sustain a fair use defense in the following circumstances:
When a model is deployed for purposes such as analysis or research… the outputs are unlikely to substitute for expressive works used in training. But making commercial use of vast troves of copyrighted works to produce expressive content that competes with them in existing markets, especially where this is accomplished through illegal access, goes beyond established fair use boundaries.
The office will soon publish a final version of Part 3 that it expects will emerge “without any substantive changes expected in the analysis or conclusions.”
Tech law professor Blake. E Reid [7]described the report as “very bad news for the AI companies in litigation” and “A straight-ticket loss for the AI companies”.
Among the AI companies currently in litigation on copyright matters are Google, Meta, OpenAI, and Microsoft. All four made donations to Donald Trump’s inauguration fund.
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Reid’s post also pondered the timing of the Part 3 report – despite the office saying it was released “in response to congressional inquiries and expressions of interest from stakeholders” – and wrote “I continue to wonder (speculatively!) if a purge at the Copyright Office is incoming and they felt the need to rush this out.”
Reid looks prescient as the Trump administration [9]reportedly fired the head of the Copyright Office, Shira Perlmutter, on Saturday.
[10]Bad trip coming for AI hype as humanity tools up to fight back
[11]Tech titans: Wanna secure US AI leadership? Stop giving the world excuses to buy Chinese
[12]TAKE IT DOWN Act? Yes, take the act down before it's too late for online speech
[13]On the issue of AI copyright, Blair Institute favors tech bros over Cool Britannia
Representative Joe Morelle (D-NY), [14]wrote the termination was “…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.”
Morelle linked the words “she refused to rubber-stamp” to the Part 3 report discussed above.
The remarks about Musk may refer to the billionaire’s recent endorsement of Twitter founder Jack Dorsey’s [15]desire to “Delete all IP law", or the Tesla and SpaceX boss’s plans to [16]train his own “Grok” AI on X users’ posts.
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There’s another possible explanation for Perlmutter’s ousting: The Copyright Office is a department of the Library of Congress, whose leader was last week fired on grounds of “quite concerning things that she had done … in the pursuit of DEI [diversity, equity, and inclusion] and putting inappropriate books in the library for children," according to White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt.
So maybe this is just the Trump administration enacting its policy on diversity without regard to the report’s possible impact on donors or Elon Musk. ®
Get our [18]Tech Resources
[1] https://www.copyright.gov/ai/Copyright-and-Artificial-Intelligence-Part-3-Generative-AI-Training-Report-Pre-Publication-Version.pdf
[2] https://www.theregister.com/2025/04/09/ietf_ai_preferences_working_group/
[3] https://www.theregister.com/2025/01/10/meta_libgen_allegation/
[4] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/aiml&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2aCHGvzQbt4g4drLco6-XswAAARA&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[5] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/aiml&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44aCHGvzQbt4g4drLco6-XswAAARA&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[6] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/aiml&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33aCHGvzQbt4g4drLco6-XswAAARA&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[7] https://bsky.app/profile/chup.blakereid.org/post/3lot4e7onuk2m
[8] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/aiml&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44aCHGvzQbt4g4drLco6-XswAAARA&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[9] https://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/national-international/trump-administration-fires-top-copyright-official/3866143/
[10] https://www.theregister.com/2025/04/22/bad_trip_coming_for_ai/
[11] https://www.theregister.com/2025/05/09/tech_titans_wanna_secure_us/
[12] https://www.theregister.com/2025/04/29/take_it_down_act_passes/
[13] https://www.theregister.com/2025/04/03/blair_institute_ai_copyright/
[14] https://democrats-cha.house.gov/media/press-releases/morelles-statement-abrupt-firing-shira-perlmutter-register-copyrights
[15] https://www.theregister.com/2025/04/22/bad_trip_coming_for_ai/
[16] https://www.theregister.com/2025/04/14/ireland_investigation_into_x/
[17] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/aiml&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33aCHGvzQbt4g4drLco6-XswAAARA&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[18] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Re: Shooting the Whistleblower
"It was an accident. He fell down an open elevator shaft -- on top of 23 bullets."
If any of this shit went down in another country, the US would invade to "restore democracy" / "seize mineral rights" (delete as appropriate)
They're "the good guys" so in this case it's fine, or something. The USA could always decide to invade itself over this of course.
I thought they'd outsourced invading themselves to Mexico?
They would invade Mexico any time, but those cartels are very mean.
Confused
"putting inappropriate books in the library for children"
The Library of Congress is a copyright library, i.e. it has to be supplied with a copy of every single book that is published in the US.
Has some numpty simply seen a 'woke' book on their inventory list and decided that they are promoting 'wokeness' by doing their actual job?
Answers on a postage stamp since 'Yes' will easily fit there.
Re: Confused
Simple - any book that does not flatter Agent Orange or pander to his legions of range-monkeys...
same old same old, newspaper companies want google to pay for sending customers to their web sites, now apparently so do content creators..
If its out there on the web, its FREE AND AVAILABLE for anyone to use how they like!
Your name is Sam Altman and i claim my $5...
The actions of a facist dictatorship, and this is merely another facet. But the Trump shills, Putinistas and Faragists all seem very silent on these topics. It’s as if they realise that these actions are beyond the pale, they’re too obviously indefensible. But they also realise that there’s a very real possibility that they don’t need to comment. It’s entirely possible that the US is now too far gone, the machinery of democracy is too far dismantled, for there ever to be a fair election again. So they don’t need to say anything at all.
If, by a miracle, a centrist government does get into power again in the US then it will need to do so on a mandate of restructuring - it must be written into the constitution, for example, that the Supreme Court is non-partisan (and therefore made up equally of judges from across the political spectrum, not just whoever the president fancies will give him carte blanche). Some serious thought needs to be given to how to handle political districts (maybe keep them as they are, but weight them according to population density) and the electoral college.
And, for everyone else, before going to the ballot box consider… This is what nationalism and voting for right wing parties gets you. It gets you war, school shootings, social inequality, fiscal instability and a flag and dictator that you have to salute. Is that really what you want?
Give it four or five hours until the US wakes up and the anonymous downvotes will appear with no explanation or justification, as usual.
I wasn't sure whether to downvote that to prove your point or upvote it to acknowledge its truth.
I don’t know. The US doesn’t have a monopoly on jingoistic stupidity. Look at all the votes for Brexit. Look at how well Reform (in the UK) continues to do, despite the treachery of Nigel Farage. Russia is a different kettle of worms because the dismantling of democracy there is complete - and the only hope for them is if the military gets fed up with Putin. But then one type of tyranny is swapped for another type of tyranny.
I fully expect a series of Reform resignations fairly soon because they're like [1]Mr Gumby and the job will be too much for them. And a bunch of others will have a dodgy background that people find out about within 4 seconds of searching X and have to step down.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M68GeL8PafE
"Delete all IP law"
Trade marks are a part IP law. If the law is deleted I could put other peoples' trade marks in places they do not want them. I tried thinking of places to put Tesla's trade mark where it would put the company into disrepute. It turns out there is no need to bother as the logos are already on Tesla vehicles and show rooms.
Nice things
Elon> Nice things you have created here! Lemme just take it, you peasant!
An awful lot of Americans simply do not care about what are to them abstract concepts of civil liberty. As the Eagles put it in 'Desperado'. "And freedom, oh freedom, well that's just some people talking".
There is a huge cultural gap between a college professor in Boston and a farmhand in North Dakota and the idea that somehow everyone will come together in some kind of civil uprising to thwart Trump is simply fanciful. What we are seeing here is, frankly, what an awful lot of people actually wanted. They feel disempowered and disrespected and they really don't give a damn about copyright, AI, or the tech bros, as long as somebody promises them the steel mill ain't gonna close. You cannot map European liberalism onto the American population as a whole, and this is not to even begin to bring the much wider influence of religious fundamentalism in the US into the picture.
Meanwhile back on Airstrip One everyone's become obsessed with achieving some kind of bucolic Green and Pleasant Land where everyone is the same colour and nobody has to endure people gabbling on the train in some foreign language (except rich Japanese tourists, possibly). And it looks like Starmer's only too pleased to pander to this, being clearly a man to whom the aphorism "I have principals. And if you don't like them... well, I have others" couldn't be more apt. Surely it cannot be long before troublesome books in the English syllabus are replaced by things like Conan Doyle's "The White Company" where the yeoman heart of oak British folk triumph over volatile, cowardly garlic munching foreigners.
Shooting the Whistleblower
At least they haven't started falling out windows yet.