Build an angel, not a demigod; The Washington Post, June 16, 2026

 Bill Drexel, The Washington Post ; Build an angel, not a demigod

Religious commitment is good at shaping behavior. That should interest AI labs.

"Recent attention from religious authorities toward AI, such as Pope Leo XIV’s encyclical, is a welcome development for the trajectory of this technology. But the more necessary step is for the engineers to return the favor — to be more honest about the religious shape of their own anxieties, not least to themselves, and the advantages that religious inspiration might provide to address their fears.

Were they more open to it, these labs might even recognize that theology offers them a better goal: developing an angel, superior to humans in intelligence and power but sent to serve them. Instead of raising a demigod, might they not try to engineer a Gabriel?"

The Millions of Songs Mashed Into AI-Generated Music; The Atlantic, June 14, 2026

Alex Reisner, The Atlantic; The Millions of Songs Mashed Into AI-Generated Music

"The actual recordings that go into any model are a closely guarded secret—AI companies have claimed they are proprietary—but the number of songs is almost certainly huge, spanning genres and time periods.

As part of my series of investigations into AI training data, I recently discovered four giant datasets of songs that are being shared within the AI-development community. One has 12 million tracks. Another has 9 million. The two smaller datasets each have more than 100,000. They include hits from major pop artists such as Bad Bunny, Nirvana, Taylor Swift, Billie Eilish, Pearl Jam, Elvis Costello, Sheryl Crow, and the Beatles. (The New Radicals’ “You Get What You Give” is in two of the datasets.) Jazz artists such as Miles Davis, John Zorn, and Vijay Iyer are featured, as are classical composers and tens of thousands of minor artists across genres. The 12-million-track dataset, on its own, would take 91 years to listen to...

In an attempt to prevent their products from generating songs that duplicate existing music, AI companies implement detection software. But neither Suno nor Udio prevents users from generating songs in the style of real artists. Earlier this year, Sony found 135,000 AI-generated tracks attributed to its artists on various streaming platforms. Although it’s not clear exactly which AI tools were used to generate those tracks, the technology is already harming artists’ ability to make a living from their music...

usicians and labels have filed at least 12 lawsuits against AI companies for training models on copyrighted music. The music industry’s three major labels have sued both Suno and Udio, and others have sued Google, OpenAI, and smaller AI vendors. No rulings have been issued in these cases, but some of the labels have reached settlements with Suno and Udio...

On the Free Music Archive, the guitarist and singer Derek Clegg has been sharing his original, home-recorded songs for more than 15 years. Clegg told me he’s happy for people to put his music in the background of their personal videos, as long as they credit him. When people expect to make money from the use of his music, then they pay him for a license. More than 250 of Clegg’s songs are in the FMA dataset I found. I asked whether he would opt out of AI training if a mechanism for doing so existed. “Yeah, definitely,” he said.

What bothers Clegg most is that AI companies take people’s music without consent, and without acknowledging that their tech products are entirely dependent on musicians. “It just seems dishonest. It seems like theft,” he said. “There’s going to have to be a reckoning.” That’s his hope, anyway."

Why AI Is Incorrigibly Didactic; The Atlantic, June 15, 2026

  Adam Kirsch, The Atlantic; Why AI Is Incorrigibly Didactic

"AI writing never challenges the way we think or see. It can’t do so, even if you explicitly ask it to. And this limitation reveals something important about the source of human creativity. All writing, all speech, has to follow conventions; to know how to use a language is to know how other people already use it. But it’s also possible to find new ways of using it, to say things in a way no one has ever heard before. This possibility exists because we can appeal to something more fundamental than language—our experiences of reality, which are so varied and surprising that language can never exhaust them...

An LLM “is simply generating the next token according to learned patterns. Yet from the outside, readers often perceive a distinctive voice.”

And that is why the rise of AI writing represents a great opportunity for literature, even as it makes life harder for professional writers. When photography was developed in the 19th century, it replaced painting for most utilitarian purposes; a camera could document what things looked like more accurately and cheaply than a painter could. But the art of painting didn’t die out. On the contrary, it entered a golden age: Freed from the obligation of realism, painters developed radical new ways of seeing, such as Impressionism, Cubism, and abstract expressionism. Now AI has the potential to liberate literature in the same way. In a world full of emptily competent prose, we need writers daring, challenging, and obstinate enough to tell us what it’s like to be human, “from the inside.”"

Attempt to ban book at SLO County school library denied by board; The Tribune, June 13, 2026

Sadie Dittenber, The Tribune ; Attempt to ban book at SLO County school library denied by board

"The Lucia Mar school board rejected an effort to ban a prize-winning author’s book from the Arroyo Grande High School library at a meeting on Thursday.

The novel “The Bluest Eye” by Toni Morrison will remain in the Arroyo Grande High School library — despite an effort to have it removed from the shelves due to sexual content and other concerns...

Arroyo Grande English teacher Nicholas Kennedy wore a T-shirt that read “Probably reading Toni Morrison” to the meeting. He reminded board members that the book in question is not required reading, and that students — and their parents — can choose whether or not they read it...

Pham took issue with some of the syntax used in the novel, which she described as growing progressively worse throughout the book — but her comment drew sharp disagreement from board president Stewart. 

“Well, we can’t be afraid of different cultures’ patois, and they way they speak, right?” Stewart responded. “That’s racism.”"

UI Center for Intellectual Freedom book on hold over copyright concerns; The Gazette, June 15, 2026

Vanessa Miller, The Gazette; UI Center for Intellectual Freedom book on hold over copyright concerns

"A book the University of Iowa-based Center for Intellectual Freedom director announcedwas in the works late last year is on hold over copyright concerns about who might get the proceeds — despite UI assurances they would go to the center."

Why could closing a library silence music groups?; BBC, June 11, 2026

 Martin Heath , BBC; Why could closing a library silence music groups?

"The conductor of a long-established orchestra has warned that some music and drama groups could fold if a performing arts library is closed.

Hertfordshire County Council has consulted on a plan to shut down the facility, which provides music and scripts for about 230 groups.

It says it is having to make savings to ensure essential library services are protected.

So why would getting rid of the performing arts collection have such an impact?...

Could groups close if they cannot rely on the library?

Ross said: "My colleagues who are the librarians in our society, and in all other comparable organisations, are all volunteers doing this in their own time. [They] are going to find what's already quite a complex job... [becomes] something that's almost going to be impossible. 

"So, in short, yes, I think some groups may close down and for others, they're going to be spending a lot more money from what are inevitably very limited budgets on music hire, which means they can't spend that money then on other activities that serve the community."

Bryony Woods, co-founder of the Stotfold Singers, said closure "would really negatively impact a lot of people". 

"I think we're living in a time where you know we're becoming more isolated and lonely than ever and I think something that is bringing people out of their homes to join in something like communal singing is only a positive thing and I think we should be encouraging it.""

AI In the Public Interest: Authorship & Copyright in the Age of AI; JD Supra, June 11, 2026

 J. Jekkie Kim, Ariel Soiffer , JD Supra; AI In the Public Interest: Authorship & Copyright in the Age of AI

"In the Public Interest is excited to present the new miniseries, “AI In the Public Interest.” These episodes will examine AI’s impact on the legal landscape and its broader implications for the day-to-day operations of organizations across industries. With the wider prevalence of companies utilizing AI to assist in decision making and determine future frameworks, these conversations will not only take stock of the current state of AI, but will also offer practical insights into what the future may hold. 

The first episode kicks off with a conversation between co-host Jekkie Kim and Partner and Chair of WilmerHale’s AI Technology Transactions Practice Ariel Soiffer. Together they discuss AI through the lens of ownership and copyright, examining guidance from the Copyright Office as to who and what can be a content author. Soiffer also identifies what current protections are in place for those attempting to copyright content that has been created with the involvement of AI. He stresses how important it is for creators and companies alike to document their creative outputs and offers a look into the increasingly complex questions surrounding authorship."

The World’s Leading Deepfake Expert No Longer Trusts His Own Eyes: In the age of A.I., Hany Farid is struggling to prove what’s real before the internet decides for itself.; The New York Times, June 14, 2026

 

Eli Saslow

Visuals by Erin Schaff

, The New York Times ; The World’s Leading Deepfake Expert No Longer Trusts His Own Eyes: In the age of A.I., Hany Farid is struggling to prove what’s real before the internet decides for itself.

"For more than two decades, Farid, 60, had been the world’s leading expert in the field of digital forensics, but in the last six months he’d stopped trusting his own eyes. He’d made a career of differentiating visual reality from deepfakes as he fielded requests each day from governments, human rights organizations, journalists, law enforcement and thousands of others who were increasingly confused and deceived by the online world. Farid’s own research had proven that most people could no longer distinguish a real photograph from a digital creation, a real voice from an A.I. clone, a real video clip from a wholesale fabrication. Lately, he was failing his own tests.

“I feel like I’m going blind,” Farid said, and he worried that A.I. was obscuring the truth, distorting reality, fracturing democracies and slowly breaking him, too. He and his wife had begun making plans to leave California and trade the tech culture of Silicon Valley for a farm in rural Vermont."

Japan underlines stance on copyright works after Trump anime video post; Kyodo News, Japan Wire, June 12, 2026

Kyodo News, Japan Wire; Japan underlines stance on copyright works after Trump anime video post

"A Japanese minister on Friday underlined the government's stance on unauthorized use of copyrighted works, after U.S. President Donald Trump posted a video on social media appearing to depict him as the hero of anime series "Naruto."

Without commenting directly on the video, Kimi Onoda, minister for the "Cool Japan" strategy of promoting Japanese cultural exports, told a press conference that the "basic principle" of obtaining permission from rights holders to use copyrighted material "applies equally when the user is a public institution."

Can we trust AI models? Yale researchers explore the roots of chatbot errors; YaleNews, June 12, 2026

 Mike Cummings, YaleNews; Can we trust AI models? Yale researchers explore the roots of chatbot errors

"The rapid rise of artificial intelligence (AI) has inserted a new character into people’s lives: the chatbot. 

Individuals now engage with agentic AI chatbots to perform a growing number of tasks; They can help a person shop for a new laptop, manage email, or plan a vacation.   

And while these interactions can save time and increase productivity, they also carry risk. Large language models (LLM) — the AI systems trained on massive datasets to generate human-like text — are imperfect. They hallucinate. They misinterpret. They make mistakes. 

Two multidisciplinary teams of researchers associated with the Center for Algorithms, Data, and Market Design at Yale are pursuing projects that aim to balance the capability and safety of AI systems and improve interactions between users and AI models. 

Yale News recently spoke with members of both teams about their research projects."

Dutch far-right party pays damages to court artist after changing image with AI; The Guardian, June 13, 2026

Senay Boztas, The Guardian; Dutch far-right party pays damages to court artist after changing image with AI

"A Dutch court artist has received damages after an MP for the far-right Party for Freedom (PVV) used one of her drawings without permission and manipulated it with AI to make the subjects look more menacing.

Petra Urban, a court artist for 19 years, was shocked to discover a drawing she had made last year of two Syrian brothers jailed for the murder of their sister had been reworked and used in a video on Instagram and Facebook by the party’s Noord-Brabant region...

Under Dutch law, creators are not only protected by copyright but also have moral rights to object to any distortion of their work that could harm their reputation. There was widespread shock in May after Urban shared the images with fellow court reporters, and the case had widespread press coverage.

Urban said that after her union issued a legal demand for licensing rights and damages, the PVV MP Maikel Boon called her to apologise and has now paid the damages – which have not been made public.

Since the MP had previously been accused of using AI to manipulate images for campaign purposes, she felt “no mercy” in demanding compensation. “I hope it’s clear that this is a worrying development and that we need to stay alert,” she said. “You need to be able to assume that journalistic work is written, drawn, photographed or filmed as neutrally as possible. If this is manipulated, then the flood gates are open. There’s no knowing where it will end.”...

The MP has publicly accepted responsibility and told De Telegraaf he had thought an altered image would no longer be subject to copyright but that it had been a “very stupid act”."

Primanti Bros. faces lawsuit over mural; TribLive, June 12, 2026

Julia Burdelski and Megan Trotter, TribLive ; Primanti Bros. faces lawsuit over mural

"A local artist in a lawsuit filed Thursday accused Primanti Bros. of reproducing a mural he painted at the sandwich shop’s Market Square location without his permission.

Artist James Kanfoush in the lawsuit claimed Primanti Bros. violated copyright rules and the Visual Artists Rights Act by displaying replicas of his mural at their Cranberry and Grove City restaurants.

Kanfoush in 1997 and 1998 created an original mural featuring famous Pittsburgh sports figures at the restaurant’s Market Square site. The artwork includes Kanfoush’s name and contact information."

More courts are coming down on ‘non-offending counsel’ for AI missteps; ABA Journal, June 10, 2026

 AMANDA ROBERT , ABA Journal; More courts are coming down on ‘non-offending counsel’ for AI missteps

"Amid the proliferation of cases involving artificial intelligence-generated hallucinations, more judges are expressing frustration not only at the attorneys who make the mistakes but at opposing counsel for not pointing it out. 

In the past year, courts have admonished attorneys for failing to identify and report fake citations in their opponents’ court filings. In at least two cases, judges refused to award attorney fees or grant relief to counsel who didn’t bring AI-induced errors to their attention."

Federal judge removes 4 plaintiff and defense attorneys over AI errors; ABA Journal, June 10, 2026

 AMANDA ROBERT, ABA Journal ; Federal judge removes 4 plaintiff and defense attorneys over AI errors

"A federal judge in Mississippi on Monday disqualified the plaintiff counsel and the defense counsel after both parties filed briefs with artificial intelligence-generated mistakes in a dispute over attorney fees.

“This case presents the court with an unusual scenario—attorneys for both litigants engaged in similar sanctionable conduct,” said Senior U.S. District Judge Sharion Aycock of the Northern District of Mississippi in her June 8 order...

Aycock revoked Wilson’s and Williams’ pro hac vice statuses and barred them from appearing in the Northern District of Mississippi for two years. The judge also ordered all four attorneys to pay monetary sanctions, ranging from $1,000 each for the local counsel to $2,500 for Williams and $3,500 for Wilson."

Operation Pushkin’: Paris Trial Puts Spotlight on Rare-Book Heists; The New York Times, June 12, 2026

 Ephrat Livni, The New York Times ; ‘Operation Pushkin’: Paris Trial Puts Spotlight on Rare-Book Heists

One by one, valuable works by Russian masters like Pushkin and Gogol were disappearing from libraries across Europe. Now six defendants are being prosecuted.

"The latest chapter in the saga of an international book heist that stripped prominent libraries across Europe of more than 170 rare Russian literary works is being written in a Paris courtroom this week.

Alexander Pushkin, the 19th-century poet and novelist considered the father of modern Russian literature, is a main character. Most of the thefts targeted his works — worth nearly $3 million in total — from libraries in the Czech Republic, Estonia, France, Finland, Germany, Latvia, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Poland and Switzerland.

The other characters have a less literary pedigree. They are six Georgian defendants standing trial, most unnamed by the French authorities, on accusations of conspiracy and theft...

The crimes stunned librarians, bibliophiles and prosecutors alike because of their scale, the prominence of the libraries targeted and the near-singular focus of the suspects. The investigation became known as “Operation Pushkin.”

The thieves used different background stories, giving various reasons for their interest in rare Russian books, according to a law enforcement arm of the European Union, the Agency for Criminal Justice Cooperation. They often worked in pairs, with one distracting librarians while the other replaced the original work with a copy, usually after multiple visits."

Federal court hears oral arguments in appeal of Arkansas’ library obscenity law; Arkansas Advocate, June 11, 2026

 TESS VRBIN, Arkansas Advocate; Federal court hears oral arguments in appeal of Arkansas’ library obscenity law

"A federal appeals court heard arguments Thursday to uphold the injunction of a 2023 Arkansas law governing challenges to library content, while Arkansas’ solicitor general said the plaintiffs’ allegations were “too speculative.”

The three-judge panel from the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis will rule on whether two sections of Act 372 of 2023 can go into effect. A district judge blocked the provisions in 2024, and the state appealed the ruling in 2025.

The two challenged sections would create criminal liability for librarians who distribute content that some consider “obscene” or “harmful to minors,” and give city and county governing bodies the final say over library content.

The 18 plaintiffs in the case include libraries, bookstores, advocacy groups and individual library patrons. The defendants are Arkansas’ 28 prosecuting attorneys, Crawford County and its county judge, Chris Keith.

Crawford County lost another federal lawsuit in 2024 after three parents claimed the county library violated the First Amendment by moving LGBTQ+ children’s books into separate “social sections” that only adults could access."

AI company argues its use of scraped Westlaw legal data was transformative; Courthouse News Service, June 11, 2026

SYDNEY HAULENBEEK , Courthouse News Service; AI company argues its use of scraped Westlaw legal data was transformative

"“Fair use ruling here brings into question the core technology of the AI revolution,” Mark S. Davies of White & Case in Washington, attorney for ROSS, argued...

“This is a copyright case,” he said. “It’s an interesting case, it raises lots of issues, but it’s a copyright case and the point of copyright is progress.”

“Copyright is not a privilege reserved for the well-behaved,” Davies added."

Musk’s Starlink hooked rural customers. Then came the price increases.; The Washington Post, June 11, 2026

 Faiz Siddiqui , The Washington Post; Musk’s Starlink hooked rural customers. Then came the price increases.

[Kip Currier: Unfortunately, Starlink raising prices on Internet access for rural customers is absolutely no surprise. This is what happens when administrations implement anti-competitive policies that enable monopolistic economic conditions.

Indeed, I commented on this kind of foreseeable scenario one year ago, in June 2025: See https://kipcurrierethics.blogspot.com/2025/06/trump-admin-tells-pennsylvania-other.html]

"Starlink told some U.S. customers last month it was raising prices and increased the cost of most plans for a service that counts millions of users across the country.

“I can complain about Starlink raising their prices, but it’s the only real option we have,” said Slama, a Republican and former Nebraska state senator. “Once they have rural customers on their service with no meaningful alternatives, they’re free to raise prices at will.”

Musk has long billed Starlink as a lifeline: an internet service that will finally bring reliable connectivity to people in the world’s rural and off-the-grid locales.

As its parent company moves toward an IPO, rural broadbandadvocates say the company has begun to squeeze its isolated U.S. users, raising prices in areas where options are limited and striving to box out competition.

SpaceX has lobbied against federal spending that would benefit Starlink’s rural broadband alternatives, calling the issue it targets “effectively … solved,” an assertion disputed by advocates for wider broadband access and many residents of rural areas."

How to share AI riches: From Donald Trump to Sam Altman, the idea of redistributing them is catching on. Does it make sense?; The Economist; June 11, 2026

 The Economist; How to share AI riches: From Donald Trump to Sam Altman, the idea of redistributing them is catching on. Does it make sense?

"The artificial-intelligence boom has minted vast fortunes. Jensen Huang’s stake of nearly 4% in Nvidia, the chipmaker he co-founded in 1993, is worth $175bn, up 50-fold in seven years. Anthropic’s latest funding round, which valued the ai lab at nearly $1trn, more than doubled the estimated wealth of its boss, Dario Amodei. Yet as new plutocrats gain riches, most Americans doubt the gains from ai will be widely shared. Less than one in three think the technology will make ordinary people richer."

Nearly 3,000 peer-reviewed medical papers have fake citations, a Columbia Nursing AI-assisted audit finds; Columbia, May 8, 2026

 Columbia ; Nearly 3,000 peer-reviewed medical papers have fake citations, a Columbia Nursing AI-assisted audit finds

"A new Columbia University School of Nursing AI-assisted audit reveals nearly 3,000 peer-reviewed medical papers have fake citations that do not exist in scientific databases. The results highlight an alarming trend in academic publishing as the use of AI grows.  The peer-reviewed research letter, “Fabricated citations: an audit across 2·5 million biomedical papers, was published in The Lancet on May 7, 2026."

Fabricated citations: an audit across 2·5 million biomedical papers; The Lancet, May 9, 2026

 Maxim Topaz,  Nir Roguin,  Pallavi Gupta,  Zhihong Zhang,  Laura-Maria Peltonen, The Lancet ; Fabricated citations: an audit across 2·5 million biomedical papers

"Scientific literature depends on the integrity of its references. Each reference implicitly asserts that a verifiable source exists and supports the claims being made. When references point to non-existent studies, readers, reviewers, and policy makers are unable to evaluate the evidence.

Fabricated references (references whose claimed titles correspond to no existing publication) can arise from paper mill activity, intentional misconduct, or uncritical use of artificial intelligence (AI) writing tools.1 Large language models (LLMs) generate plausible sounding but fictitious references, a well documented failure mode; previous studies estimate that 30–69% of LLM-generated references in biomedical contexts are fabricated.2,3 These references are often correctly formatted, attributed to real researchers, and bear plausible publication dates, making them difficult to detect by conventional peer review.4 To our knowledge, no systematic audit of reference integrity across the biomedical literature has been conducted until now.

We present findings from a reference-integrity audit of 2·5 million biomedical papers spanning 3 years, showing that fabricated references are embedded in the peer-reviewed literature at scale, and that the rate of fabrication is accelerating."

Dealership revoked offer to buy back customer's BMW, blaming wayward AI chatbot; CBC, June 11, 2026

  Sophia Harris, CBC; Dealership revoked offer to buy back customer's BMW, blaming wayward AI chatbot 

"After his 2021 BMW required major repairs, Zack Giacomelli decided last month he wanted to sell it back to BMW Toronto — the same dealership from which he bought the used car in 2023.

At first, the buy-back process seemed easy. After submitting an online inquiry, Giacomelli got a text from Quinn at BMW Toronto, who was eager to help. 

Quinn expressed sympathy for Giacomelli's car troubles and asked questions about the vehicle, which was still being repaired at the dealership. Later in the same text conversation, Quinn made a firm buy-back offer: $27,162.79.

Giacomelli, a 31-year-old funeral director, was satisfied, as the offer was just enough to cover what he still owed on the car. 

"I felt this Quinn person was finally hearing me out," he said. "I was feeling really good."

The good feeling didn't last. Moments later, Giacomelli said, a BMW Toronto sales consultant called to revoke the offer, explaining that Quinn wasn't a real person, but rather an artificial intelligence chatbot that had made the offer in error."

Copyright law ‘struggling’ to parse AI’s ascendancy; Harvard Law Today, June 10, 2026

Rebecca Beyer, Harvard Law Today; Copyright law ‘struggling’ to parse AI’s ascendancy

"Deferring hard decisions about which kinds of machine-assisted creative works can be copyrighted over nearly 250 years has made it harder to ascertain whether works produced with the help of artificial intelligence can receive legal protection, according to Harvard Law School Professor Rebecca Tushnet...

Tushnet, the Frank Stanton Professor of the First Amendment, spoke as part of a panel discussion, “Copyright in AI Outputs: Who Owns AI-Created Works?,” that was presented by HLS Beyond in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s March decision to deny certiorari in Thaler v. Perlmutter, a case in which lower courts upheld the Copyright Office’s decision not to issue a copyright to an AI-generated image because “copyright law … requires human authorship.” Matt Kristoffersen ’27 moderated the discussion, which included Boston University School of Law Professor Jessica Silbey, Harvard Law Professor Christopher T. Bavitz, and an extensive Q&A session with audience members."

Rare Full Court Rehearing Granted in Copyright Case Against Kat Von D’s Miles Davis Tattoo; PetaPixel, June 10, 2026

THOMAS MADDREY, PetaPixel; Rare Full Court Rehearing Granted in Copyright Case Against Kat Von D’s Miles Davis Tattoo

"On June 9, Chief Judge for the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals Mary H. Murguia issued an Order in the case of Jeffery B. Sedlik v. Katherine von Drachenberg, aka Kat Von D, et. al. granting an en banc rehearing by the full court...

In a nutshell, this rare move by the Court tells the litigants that even though a panel of three Ninth Circuit judges have rendered an opinion in the case, the question is unsettled enough that a hearing by the full 11-judge panel is warranted. 

This is not a common occurrence: in 2024, for example, the Court received 625 petitions for en banc review, 29 cases were then voted on by the Court to see if they should be heard, and only nine cases succeeded in that vote. In some years, this number increases, but rarely are more than 20 cases a year granted such a special evaluation. The Court reserved this designation for those cases that indicate a clear split with other Circuit Courts around the country, cases that are likely to be reviewed by the U.S. Supreme Court, and if the issues presented affect many others similarly situated, among other considerations. This case checks all those boxes."

Congress Just Rushed Through a Disastrous Copyright Office Overhaul; Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), June 10, 2026

JOE MULLIN , Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF); Congress Just Rushed Through a Disastrous Copyright Office Overhaul; Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF)

"In a voice vote earlier this week, the House of Representatives passed H.R. 6028, the “Legislative Branch Agencies Clarification Act.” The legislation is presented as a technical reorganization of some government agencies, but it’s much more than that. 

H.R. 6028 would fundamentally change the U.S. Copyright Office, and not in a good way. The bill removes the Library of Congress’ current supervisory role over the Copyright Office, transfers several powers directly to the Register of Copyrights, and makes the Register a presidential appointee, confirmed by the Senate. 

These changes would make an office that’s already hugely influential in copyright and tech policy much more political. EFF first explained why that’s a terrible idea when it came up nearly a decade ago. This bill, like the older one, weakens the few public-interest checks and balances that do exist.  We hope the Senate promptly rejects this bill."