Trump Asks Supreme Court to Let Him Fire the Top Copyright Official

Posted2 months agoActiveabout 2 months ago

donohoe

47 points

17 comments

nytimes.comOtherstory

heatednegative

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Trump Administration

Supreme Court

Former President Trump has asked the Supreme Court to allow him to fire the top copyright official, sparking concerns about politicization of copyright law; commenters debate the implications for independence of regulatory bodies.

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Oct 27, 2025 at 4:27 PM EDT
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Discussion (17 comments)

Showing 17 comments

garciasn

2 months ago

1 reply

https://archive.is/CW6uI

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There is no detail as to the 'why' to other than 'because we said so.'

pseudalopex

2 months ago

The 1st attempt to fire her was the day after her office issued a report which said copying without permission to train generative AI may not be legal always.[1]

[1] https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/trump-asks-supreme-...

Razengan

2 months ago

2 replies

These cyclical democracies really need a way to easily Ctrl/Cmd+Z the damage done during a despotic episode.

embedding-shape

2 months ago

2 replies

Maybe we could reset a democracy every N years (50?) and basically say "Out with everything" and start from scratch.

Wowfunhappy

2 months ago

2 replies

How on earth would this work? Would you throw out all of contract and business law? Any permits people have get reset? Is the military disbanded and restarted from scratch?

embedding-shape

2 months ago

> How on earth would this work?

Maybe something similar to what the French been doing could do the trick: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Republics

Basically a bit more large scale changes every now and then, shake up the status quo.

jncfhnb

2 months ago

Works for government funding

salawat

2 months ago

1 reply

Originally, Jefferson imagined a state where all acts of legislation came with sunset dates. The idea being that a State would cap out and auto prune itself through the inherent friction of having to reapprove only the most important foundations of itself. Instead of accruing cruft, it'd allow for an equilibrium of law and liberties constantly returning to the public, and only the most unanimously supported measures to stay in force. A government for the living, rather than one of the legacies of the dead, which was favored by Madison.

gamblor956

2 months ago

2 replies

And every other Founding Father rejected the idea as completely unworkable.

The current shutdown demonstrates why Jefferson's idea was a bad idea.

embedding-shape

2 months ago

1 reply

> And every other Founding Father rejected the idea as completely unworkable.

I went looking for more information when parent left their comment, and I found some letters:

- Jefferson to Madison, Sept. 6, 1789 ("earth belongs in usufruct to the living" 19-year term, expiry by default)

- Madison to Jefferson, Feb. 4, 1790 (three classes of laws; stability, property, tacit consent)

- Jefferson to Samuel Kercheval, July 12, 1816 (periodic constitutional conventions every 19–20 years)

You said "every other Founding Father" but I can't find any letters to/from anyone else, could you please share with me the source(s) you got this from so I could continue reading about this? Very interesting subject I hadn't hear about before.

gamblor956

about 2 months ago

The Constitution...

salawat

2 months ago

No it doesn't. We've got so much cruft and deadlock because we've operated in a Madisonian regime. With that cruft comes selective enforcement, and with that both contempt, and loss of legitimacy in the eyes of the populace. It is enough that the younger generations feel hemmed in by a gerontocracy to see that something has gone horribly wrong, and that the direction we've been going is part of what got us to the current situation.

krapp

2 months ago

1 reply

There is an obvious solution but unfortunately it only seems to work on good Presidents.

quuxplusone

2 months ago

Now, now. McKinley's record was mixed at best.

(And no matter what you think of McKinley, Teddy Roosevelt must count as an upgrade, right?)

lschueller

2 months ago

1 reply

Another chapter of how undermining societal decision making by ongoingly circumventing instances, which do not act in favor of the own goals. It's highly disturbing how ineffective and weak the judicial system looks like sometimes.

mandolingual

2 months ago

The judicial system rolls up to the Supreme Court and the Supreme Court is compromised. It's not a matter of weakness.

bigbadfeline

2 months ago

> An appeals court sided with the director of the U.S. Copyright Office, saying her role is to work with Congress. ... her post is part of the Library of Congress.

This could be just noise and theatrics, but I won't be surprised if SCOTUS invents another creative interpretation and allows the POTUS to do whatever he wants with the Library of Congress, then with Congress itself and... the sky is the limit.

Not that this particular Congress would even notice.

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