Odd that the article doesn't mention parties at all, although perhaps this was in an attempt to avoid accusations of partisanship that might ensue from stating facts.
Anyway, a quick look at https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/6028... indicates that all 4 sponsors of the bill are Republicans. The Actions tab seems to indicated that the bill got only 12 minutes of debate before being passed,; I hope this is an artifact of how the page is updated rather than the actual time spent on considering it.
The article doesn't mention parties because it's irrelevant. A bad bill is bad on its merits, not because of who has brought it about.
The identity of the people who crafted the bill is the second most relevant thing besides the bill itself.
Ignoring power politics doesn't make them go away
But calling them out in a partisan may disincentivize half of the people to understand the issue.
If those people want to treat political parties like sports teams then they aren't likely going to contribute much to the discussion
A large portion of that half will continue to want the wrong thing anyway.
Parties were not called out and a large amount of ensuing Othering is happening anyway. Arguably, that proves that the EFF was sound in their decision to mitigate that by not calling out the parties/politicians in hopes to keep the focus on the bill itself, doesn't it? I've long suspected that we humans tend to lose the plot so often because we want to immediately sort everyone into buckets as though compartmentalizing them brings about complete understanding of the issue on the table.
For those of us at home who need to decide which team to root for its very much relevant when and what bills a party sponsors.
> In a voice vote earlier this week, the House of Representatives passed H.R. 6028, the “Legislative Branch Agencies Clarification Act.”
wow, i had always assumed actual laws have to pass a recorded vote, but its not true...
from wiki:
> In Congress, "the vast majority of actions decided by a voice vote" are ones for which "a strong or even overwhelming majority favors one side", or even unanimous consent. Members can request a division of the assembly (a rising vote, where each sides rise in turn to be counted), and one-fifth of members can demand a recorded vote on any question, after the chair announces the result of a voice vote.
> It is estimated that more than 95 percent of the resolutions passed by state legislatures are passed by a unanimous voice vote, many without discussion; this is because resolutions are often on routine, noncontroversial matters, such as commemorating important events or recognizing groups.
Oh and the biggest bullshit about this is it removes one’s ability to hold their local representatives accountable. I just assume the worst!
From what I understand it’s rather true that a lot of Congress’ actual work is incredibly boring and that these procedures were invented to move it along.
You can see a lot of difference in the way congresspeople talk based on whether it’s televised or not as well, especially in committees.
I’m just a little surprised that voice votes haven’t been replaced by some kind of digital process. A voice vote doesn’t save time compare to a modern method of tallying votes. Why avoid making records when records are so “cheap” these days?
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Anything that destroys copyright is a good thing. It is a societal evil.
> [Copyright] is a societal evil.
Such an extreme and emotional statement makes me think you've never really thought it through. For instance: without copyright the GPL is nothing. Also without copyright, all of the profit made on creative works (of a perhaps smaller pie) would get be kept by distributors like Amazon or Netflix. Authors wouldn't get a dime anymore, it'll all go to the likes of Bezos.
RMS will happily tell you that he'd trade enforcability of the GPL for the non-existence of copyright.
> RMS will happily tell you that he'd trade enforcability of the GPL for the non-existence of copyright.
Thankfully, RMS is not my guru.
Copyright is a valuable legal technology. It should be reformed to curb abuses, but we shouldn't throw the baby out with the bathwater.
This bill very much does not do that. It does the opposite, in fact. I encourage you to re-read the article.
I understand it risks adding unpredictable political corruption to the process, but I feel that such unpredictable corruption is exactly what it takes to gradually destroy something in an indirect way.
It is not clear to me what their political agenda is. Overall it might be good for AI if the goal is to scrape freely and use it for AI training.
This position makes it impossible to discuss these things.
When I aim to accomplish something, to destroy some institution, I tend to favor the direct way, because it relies on fewer intermediate points of failure than the indirect way.
What we favor, and what is possible, often diverge.
Last time someone uttered something similar, I didn't get an answer, so I'll ask it to you: what entitles you to free access to any song, movie or book?
What entitles you to use force to stop me creating a copy of something?
I usually agree with the EFF on things, but after reading their linked https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/05/us-copyright-offices-d... I couldn't disagree more. An LLM is a predict the next word algorithm. If the model is overfitting, it's basically copy paste. There have been several documented instances where that happened and full GPL code, including headers and attribution were copy/pasted by the "AI."
AI is essentially copy paste with more steps. The part that AI companies use to defend this is ?how are we supposed to decide how much each author deserves? They try to wave this away, but their own model can tell them. Their models work off of weights. They can determine how much each work contributed based on those weights, so it's dishonest for them to argue it isn't possible. The way the models are engineered now don't make this possible, but that's intentional and we can all recognize that. They throw up their hands and claim it's not possible because they simply don't want to pay.
The most infurating thing however is how AI companies sidestep the IP rights of authors, but then claim to own those IP rights when their own generated output leaks. Anthropic filed DMCA takedowns on the leaked claude code repos, claiming ownership over something they explicitly have stated is almost entirely AI generated as part of their marketing. They take code, mix it up just enough to scrub away the GPL or whatever license belongs on it, then try to claim ownership of the result, in spite of the Copyright Office repeatedly stating that AI generated works have no copyright protection at all.
Is it actually possible to determine how much the weights were influenced by each work?
I might recall reading some interpretability paper years ago that trained a special model that could attribute each answer to a part of the corpus (like Wikipedia, ArXiV, or "Blogs") but it had a non-zero effect on performance and wasn't nearly as straightforward as weights go in, attribution comes out.
Agreed. Moreover, the authors of copyright law could never have anticipated this type and scale of abuse. Maybe the companies are legally in the right, maybe not, but that's irrelevant for the question of whether it's ethical. The EFF's post definitely goes against their mission to "ensure that technology supports freedom, justice, and innovation for all people of the world."
> They can determine how much each work contributed based on those weights, so it's dishonest for them to argue it isn't possible.
I don’t know about impossible but it’s definitely not a straightforward read from the post-training weights as you’re implying, unless you’re aware of some technique I’m not aware of.
The closest you could get would be the weight differential from training with a given work. But that’s massively dependent on training order, so that it’s certainly not at all a good measure of “contribution.”
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Yes, but saying just "congress" implies both chambers passed it
No, you would say passes both houses of Congress in that case.
Just don't like the immediate dismissal of the people's House when it comes to government affairs. When Congress does something it's important, regardless of the house it originates from.
Not necessarily. In the US traditionally the House Reps are referred to as congressmen (unlike the rest of the world) and the Senate, senators. So sometimes Congress is shorthand for the House. Though I agree it shouldn’t be.
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This is false. Traditionally, when only one chamber of Congress passes a bill, headlines explicitly state which chamber. "The House passed a bill that..." or "The Senate passes a bill that..."
The OP is correct that Congress implies both chambers. Yes, "Congressman" or "Congresswoman" refers to House members. But the headline says "Congress".
It suppose I can see "executive power should be part of the executive branch" as a facile argument because it does seem basic and a bit tautological, but it is still quite a strong point. It needs to be addressed rather than just identified and dismissed.
I suppose in that case you are wholly opposed to the regulatory system as legislative power should be part of the legislative branch?
Even people who believe the administrative state is constitutional rest that conclusion on the premise that "rulemaking" is merely the formalization of the exercise of enforcement discretion. But that means that rulemaking must be performed by the executive branch, because that is the branch charged with enforcement of the law.
DMCA rulemaking is actually an example of something that would probably be constitutional if the executive did it--even if administrative agencies in general are unconstitutional. The DMCA creates civil and criminal penalties, and calls for rulemaking to define exceptions to those penalties. Defining exceptions to civil and criminal liability falls squarely within executive enforcement discretion.
I don’t think it does. Discretion is fundamentally case by case. Drawing categorical lines is legislative.
It’s akin to the distinction between law and equity courts at common law.
Stepping back, both doctrines are fundamentally about the courts overstepping. If both houses of Congress pass a law creating an agency with a director that can only be fired for cause and the president signs it, the Supreme Court should stay out of it.
Enacting legislation is very difficult, the presumption of constitutionality should be taken more seriously.
Well, probably in theory. I don't rate that on my top 50 issues I care about and haven't given the idea much thought. But having the legislative branch be responsible for the regulatory system does sound proper.
The US executive branch has very limited decision making bandwidth and it should really be reserved for matters of war and peace.
Except that's a bad summary of a bad argument. "Rulemaking" is what Congress is supposed to do.
The Constitution doesn't say that Congress can have its employees (which is what the Copyright Office is) make legally binding rules. Congress can make laws, but only through a specific process involving votes in the House and Senate and the signature of the President.
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No surprise that you'd show up to shill for it.Your argument boils down to 'if it looks like an executive branch agency, then the Executive branch should have control over it' rather than accepting that Congress is free to set things up as it sees fit within the Constitutional constraints.
"Shilling" would require me to care about the policy, which I don't. The genius of the founders is that they realized that structure and power allocation was more important than policy, so that's what I'm commenting about.
On that point, Congress cannot "set things up as it sees fit." The constitution goes to great lengths to create a complex, three-branch system of government with specific powers allocated to each branch. Anytime Congress creates something new, it has to fit it into the three-branch model in a way that is consistent with the principles of that model. It's like a "pure" microkernel in computer science: there is a framework that dictates what goes in kernel space versus user space. Except with the constitution, the structural principles are legally binding. You can't delegate executive functions to mere employees of the legislative branch, just like in a pure microkernel you can't put the GUI into the kernel.
In this case, the DMCA creates civil and criminal liability. Creating exceptions for that is the exercise of a quintessential executive power--enforcement discretion. That power must be allocated to an executive-branch agency.
Looks like an opinion. If structural principles are legally binding, we can remember other cases from other areas.
Hypothetically, if Congress passed legislation saying "it looks like an executive branch agency, the Executive branch should have control over it" you'd consider that a generally reasonable position all else equal?
If you concede that it looks like an executive agency then it actually seems quite proper that the executive control it.
No. Congress can set up and modify different parts of the executive branch, but can also set up wholly independent agencies that are not parts of the executive branch. The current administration often argues (through legal filings or proxies) that such agencies are somehow illegitimate and the executive branch should have authority over everything. That idea isn't peculiar to this administration, they just seem to have gone all-in on 'unitary executive theory' because it provides arguments for consolidating as much power as possible in the office of the Presidency.
The current administration doesn't seem to be involved in this. This appears to be Congress, on paper, saying that the executive should control something that looks like an executive agency.
I can see how someone might disagree with that for various reasons (see the article) but in context "if it looks like an executive branch agency, then the Executive branch should have control over it" seems like a great argument and one that would probably carry in Congress, they have tended to put executive agencies under control of the executive in the past.
An argument against could refer to established practices of limiting power of executive branch in particular...
youd also have to consider that the executive branch isn't allowed to make decisions, so the copyright office couldnt actually do anything, unless congress specifically passed a law saying a certain work has or does not have copyright protections, and which specific protections.
no more major questions doctrine
I don't think you've at all addressed why moving anything there towards the executive is desirable, especially given the capriciousness of the current executive.
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FYI: though EFF articles have individual named authors, they go through an extensive collective editing process. Every post will have had at least one domain-specific lawyer reviewer who signs off on it.
That is a rather narrow definition of checks and balances. The term can be applied to any group of organizations where each organization has power and interest to limit the power of the others.
The article is talking about a bill that restructures a body in the U.S. federal government. In that context, “checks and balances” has a specific, well-known meaning. It’s like writing an article about Fedora 42 and using the term “kernel.” In that context, readers expect the term to be used in a specific way.
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I don't really understand the hypothetical problems here. "The copyright office head would be a presidential appointee, which could make the copyright office more political". I mean, I guess? Are people worried they're going to start selectively enforcing copyright law? But they don't enforce copyright law right now...
Those who are under attack happen to also be the biggest copyrighter holders, so this would open up a new avenue of attack.
It's really hard for me to feel sorry for Disney here. Is it possible for both sides to lose a lawsuit?
It's not hypothetical nor an unintended consequence. Most likely this is the point
> Those who are under attack happen to also be the biggest copyrighter holders, so this would open up a new avenue of attack.
Don't threaten me with a good time
Conversely you're already not dealing with that, so the letter and spirit of the law are both being ignored and the American voter doesn't care.
> the American voter doesn't care.
The American voter doesn't know because copyright misuse and malfeasance is on a long list of public-impacting topics that news orgs have rigorously ignored for generations.
>Are people worried they're going to start selectively enforcing copyright law?
Yes. Not only that, but to grant copyright protection only to those that are allied with/loyal to/bribe the current administration.
This would have massive, far reaching effects.
> Are people worried they're going to start selectively enforcing copyright law?
Yes.
Never gotten any emails from lawyers, I see.
Copyright laws are heavily enforced, only selectively.
Are you kidding? If there’s something in there they don’t like I don’t put it past this administration to break it internally and then make a case for shutting it down. This whole thing sounds very similar to the postal service situation…
They will break the system and use it for their friends. No way they are shutting it down. There is way too much money to be made in selective enforcement.
> Are you kidding? If there’s something in there they don’t like I don’t put it past this administration to break it internally and then make a case for shutting it down.
Might be a win? The copyright system is one of the major suspects for why US industry ended up crippled and replaced by Asian labour refusing to respect US IP laws to their significant advantage. To say nothing of the corrosive influence on culture of locking down music and stories. The biggest IP success in the last 50 years seems to have been Open Source because they built a framework inside the copyright system to achieve the opposite outcome and build a thriving industry despite the lawyers trying to encourage them in alternative directions.
The people defending the copyright system should have to keep making their case until they come up with something persuasive for how they're helping.
Tongue in cheek, but the copyright system should only last for 12 years, with one straightforward renewal, without specific reauthorization. Just like copyright in works, in my opinion
> The copyright system is one of the major suspects for why US industry ended up crippled and replaced by Asian labour refusing to respect US IP laws to their significant advantage.
Expand on this.
Wasn't it instead our desire to be the world's reserve currency and rely on cheap imports? You can't be both a net exporter and the world's top reserve currency.
You have to run trade deficits if you want to export dollars.
It comes down to comparative advantages more than anything else and the US raising the cost (in some sense outright banning) people from deploying good ideas in an industrial way seems like it'd be a significant comparative disadvantage to attracting investment. And a much bigger deal than the practical reality that the US imports more than it exports.
Maintaining an import-dependent economy might be a factor, economies are complicated. But there isn't a fundamental reason that taking in more stuff than gets exported should mean that Asia has to be more successful. If anything, a country in a position to import more than it exports should be seeing big jumps in living standards, rather the gains going to a country notionally taking the bad end of the bargain. And there are some easy resolutions to being a net importer and while having a strong industrial economy - import raw materials, make stuff that isn't for export as an example.
I mean, I agree with your general point that copyright might need to be reconsidered, but this doesn't seem like an attempt to reconsider it. It's rather transparently enabling further cronyism.
This is a one-sided article which does not discuss the opposing view, or the reason why they thought congress should appoint. Ironically, if this became law then it might have prevented Trump from removing the librarian as he attempted in 2025 (still pending in the supreme court). It also includes a term limit of 10 years.
The plain language of the bill’s summary on the bill’s web page (ignoring the EFF article) explains it quite clearly:
1. Gives power to Congress to appoint/remove the librarian rather than the president (cool, great)
2. Strips the copyright power held by the Library of Congress away, library of Congress becomes a supporting resource like a consultant
3. Reassigns that same power to a different position that’s politically appointed by the president.
What you are saying is technically true, but the deck chairs have been shuffled around in a way that seems to at least partially negate the positive change.
I also find it odd that this was passed in a voice vote. It’s hard for me to tell if that means it has strong bipartisan support? I guess I’d have to watch a video recording of the proceedings to know. If I am recalling correctly, congresspeople can call for a tallied vote if they think the voice vote was too ambiguous.
Odd that the article doesn't mention parties at all, although perhaps this was in an attempt to avoid accusations of partisanship that might ensue from stating facts.
Anyway, a quick look at https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/6028... indicates that all 4 sponsors of the bill are Republicans. The Actions tab seems to indicated that the bill got only 12 minutes of debate before being passed,; I hope this is an artifact of how the page is updated rather than the actual time spent on considering it.
The article doesn't mention parties because it's irrelevant. A bad bill is bad on its merits, not because of who has brought it about.
The identity of the people who crafted the bill is the second most relevant thing besides the bill itself.
Ignoring power politics doesn't make them go away
But calling them out in a partisan may disincentivize half of the people to understand the issue.
If those people want to treat political parties like sports teams then they aren't likely going to contribute much to the discussion
A large portion of that half will continue to want the wrong thing anyway.
Parties were not called out and a large amount of ensuing Othering is happening anyway. Arguably, that proves that the EFF was sound in their decision to mitigate that by not calling out the parties/politicians in hopes to keep the focus on the bill itself, doesn't it? I've long suspected that we humans tend to lose the plot so often because we want to immediately sort everyone into buckets as though compartmentalizing them brings about complete understanding of the issue on the table.
For those of us at home who need to decide which team to root for its very much relevant when and what bills a party sponsors.
from wiki:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voice_vote#United_StatesOh and the biggest bullshit about this is it removes one’s ability to hold their local representatives accountable. I just assume the worst!
From what I understand it’s rather true that a lot of Congress’ actual work is incredibly boring and that these procedures were invented to move it along.
You can see a lot of difference in the way congresspeople talk based on whether it’s televised or not as well, especially in committees.
I’m just a little surprised that voice votes haven’t been replaced by some kind of digital process. A voice vote doesn’t save time compare to a modern method of tallying votes. Why avoid making records when records are so “cheap” these days?
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Anything that destroys copyright is a good thing. It is a societal evil.
> [Copyright] is a societal evil.
Such an extreme and emotional statement makes me think you've never really thought it through. For instance: without copyright the GPL is nothing. Also without copyright, all of the profit made on creative works (of a perhaps smaller pie) would get be kept by distributors like Amazon or Netflix. Authors wouldn't get a dime anymore, it'll all go to the likes of Bezos.
RMS will happily tell you that he'd trade enforcability of the GPL for the non-existence of copyright.
> RMS will happily tell you that he'd trade enforcability of the GPL for the non-existence of copyright.
Thankfully, RMS is not my guru.
Copyright is a valuable legal technology. It should be reformed to curb abuses, but we shouldn't throw the baby out with the bathwater.
This bill very much does not do that. It does the opposite, in fact. I encourage you to re-read the article.
I understand it risks adding unpredictable political corruption to the process, but I feel that such unpredictable corruption is exactly what it takes to gradually destroy something in an indirect way.
It is not clear to me what their political agenda is. Overall it might be good for AI if the goal is to scrape freely and use it for AI training.
This position makes it impossible to discuss these things.
When I aim to accomplish something, to destroy some institution, I tend to favor the direct way, because it relies on fewer intermediate points of failure than the indirect way.
What we favor, and what is possible, often diverge.
Last time someone uttered something similar, I didn't get an answer, so I'll ask it to you: what entitles you to free access to any song, movie or book?
What entitles you to use force to stop me creating a copy of something?
I usually agree with the EFF on things, but after reading their linked https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/05/us-copyright-offices-d... I couldn't disagree more. An LLM is a predict the next word algorithm. If the model is overfitting, it's basically copy paste. There have been several documented instances where that happened and full GPL code, including headers and attribution were copy/pasted by the "AI."
AI is essentially copy paste with more steps. The part that AI companies use to defend this is ?how are we supposed to decide how much each author deserves? They try to wave this away, but their own model can tell them. Their models work off of weights. They can determine how much each work contributed based on those weights, so it's dishonest for them to argue it isn't possible. The way the models are engineered now don't make this possible, but that's intentional and we can all recognize that. They throw up their hands and claim it's not possible because they simply don't want to pay.
The most infurating thing however is how AI companies sidestep the IP rights of authors, but then claim to own those IP rights when their own generated output leaks. Anthropic filed DMCA takedowns on the leaked claude code repos, claiming ownership over something they explicitly have stated is almost entirely AI generated as part of their marketing. They take code, mix it up just enough to scrub away the GPL or whatever license belongs on it, then try to claim ownership of the result, in spite of the Copyright Office repeatedly stating that AI generated works have no copyright protection at all.
Is it actually possible to determine how much the weights were influenced by each work?
I might recall reading some interpretability paper years ago that trained a special model that could attribute each answer to a part of the corpus (like Wikipedia, ArXiV, or "Blogs") but it had a non-zero effect on performance and wasn't nearly as straightforward as weights go in, attribution comes out.
Agreed. Moreover, the authors of copyright law could never have anticipated this type and scale of abuse. Maybe the companies are legally in the right, maybe not, but that's irrelevant for the question of whether it's ethical. The EFF's post definitely goes against their mission to "ensure that technology supports freedom, justice, and innovation for all people of the world."
> They can determine how much each work contributed based on those weights, so it's dishonest for them to argue it isn't possible.
I don’t know about impossible but it’s definitely not a straightforward read from the post-training weights as you’re implying, unless you’re aware of some technique I’m not aware of.
The closest you could get would be the weight differential from training with a given work. But that’s massively dependent on training order, so that it’s certainly not at all a good measure of “contribution.”
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Yes, but saying just "congress" implies both chambers passed it
No, you would say passes both houses of Congress in that case.
Just don't like the immediate dismissal of the people's House when it comes to government affairs. When Congress does something it's important, regardless of the house it originates from.
Not necessarily. In the US traditionally the House Reps are referred to as congressmen (unlike the rest of the world) and the Senate, senators. So sometimes Congress is shorthand for the House. Though I agree it shouldn’t be.
This is false. Traditionally, when only one chamber of Congress passes a bill, headlines explicitly state which chamber. "The House passed a bill that..." or "The Senate passes a bill that..."
The OP is correct that Congress implies both chambers. Yes, "Congressman" or "Congresswoman" refers to House members. But the headline says "Congress".
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No
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The author, Joe Mullin, is a policy analyst:
<https://www.eff.org/about/staff/joe-mullin>.
He's been working in that capacity with the EFF since at least 2018: <https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/02/ipr-process-saves-80-c...>.
Your further objections are ... facile.
It suppose I can see "executive power should be part of the executive branch" as a facile argument because it does seem basic and a bit tautological, but it is still quite a strong point. It needs to be addressed rather than just identified and dismissed.
I suppose in that case you are wholly opposed to the regulatory system as legislative power should be part of the legislative branch?
Even people who believe the administrative state is constitutional rest that conclusion on the premise that "rulemaking" is merely the formalization of the exercise of enforcement discretion. But that means that rulemaking must be performed by the executive branch, because that is the branch charged with enforcement of the law.
DMCA rulemaking is actually an example of something that would probably be constitutional if the executive did it--even if administrative agencies in general are unconstitutional. The DMCA creates civil and criminal penalties, and calls for rulemaking to define exceptions to those penalties. Defining exceptions to civil and criminal liability falls squarely within executive enforcement discretion.
I don’t think it does. Discretion is fundamentally case by case. Drawing categorical lines is legislative.
It’s akin to the distinction between law and equity courts at common law.
Stepping back, both doctrines are fundamentally about the courts overstepping. If both houses of Congress pass a law creating an agency with a director that can only be fired for cause and the president signs it, the Supreme Court should stay out of it.
Enacting legislation is very difficult, the presumption of constitutionality should be taken more seriously.
Well, probably in theory. I don't rate that on my top 50 issues I care about and haven't given the idea much thought. But having the legislative branch be responsible for the regulatory system does sound proper.
The US executive branch has very limited decision making bandwidth and it should really be reserved for matters of war and peace.
Except that's a bad summary of a bad argument. "Rulemaking" is what Congress is supposed to do.
The Constitution doesn't say that Congress can have its employees (which is what the Copyright Office is) make legally binding rules. Congress can make laws, but only through a specific process involving votes in the House and Senate and the signature of the President.
No surprise that you'd show up to shill for it.Your argument boils down to 'if it looks like an executive branch agency, then the Executive branch should have control over it' rather than accepting that Congress is free to set things up as it sees fit within the Constitutional constraints.
"Shilling" would require me to care about the policy, which I don't. The genius of the founders is that they realized that structure and power allocation was more important than policy, so that's what I'm commenting about.
On that point, Congress cannot "set things up as it sees fit." The constitution goes to great lengths to create a complex, three-branch system of government with specific powers allocated to each branch. Anytime Congress creates something new, it has to fit it into the three-branch model in a way that is consistent with the principles of that model. It's like a "pure" microkernel in computer science: there is a framework that dictates what goes in kernel space versus user space. Except with the constitution, the structural principles are legally binding. You can't delegate executive functions to mere employees of the legislative branch, just like in a pure microkernel you can't put the GUI into the kernel.
In this case, the DMCA creates civil and criminal liability. Creating exceptions for that is the exercise of a quintessential executive power--enforcement discretion. That power must be allocated to an executive-branch agency.
Looks like an opinion. If structural principles are legally binding, we can remember other cases from other areas.
Hypothetically, if Congress passed legislation saying "it looks like an executive branch agency, the Executive branch should have control over it" you'd consider that a generally reasonable position all else equal?
If you concede that it looks like an executive agency then it actually seems quite proper that the executive control it.
No. Congress can set up and modify different parts of the executive branch, but can also set up wholly independent agencies that are not parts of the executive branch. The current administration often argues (through legal filings or proxies) that such agencies are somehow illegitimate and the executive branch should have authority over everything. That idea isn't peculiar to this administration, they just seem to have gone all-in on 'unitary executive theory' because it provides arguments for consolidating as much power as possible in the office of the Presidency.
The current administration doesn't seem to be involved in this. This appears to be Congress, on paper, saying that the executive should control something that looks like an executive agency.
I can see how someone might disagree with that for various reasons (see the article) but in context "if it looks like an executive branch agency, then the Executive branch should have control over it" seems like a great argument and one that would probably carry in Congress, they have tended to put executive agencies under control of the executive in the past.
An argument against could refer to established practices of limiting power of executive branch in particular...
youd also have to consider that the executive branch isn't allowed to make decisions, so the copyright office couldnt actually do anything, unless congress specifically passed a law saying a certain work has or does not have copyright protections, and which specific protections.
no more major questions doctrine
I don't think you've at all addressed why moving anything there towards the executive is desirable, especially given the capriciousness of the current executive.
FYI: though EFF articles have individual named authors, they go through an extensive collective editing process. Every post will have had at least one domain-specific lawyer reviewer who signs off on it.
That is a rather narrow definition of checks and balances. The term can be applied to any group of organizations where each organization has power and interest to limit the power of the others.
The article is talking about a bill that restructures a body in the U.S. federal government. In that context, “checks and balances” has a specific, well-known meaning. It’s like writing an article about Fedora 42 and using the term “kernel.” In that context, readers expect the term to be used in a specific way.
I don't really understand the hypothetical problems here. "The copyright office head would be a presidential appointee, which could make the copyright office more political". I mean, I guess? Are people worried they're going to start selectively enforcing copyright law? But they don't enforce copyright law right now...
It’s not hypothetical at all. The FCC is currently being used for political attacks: https://www.cnn.com/2026/05/28/media/abc-fcc-disney-licenses...
Those who are under attack happen to also be the biggest copyrighter holders, so this would open up a new avenue of attack.
It's really hard for me to feel sorry for Disney here. Is it possible for both sides to lose a lawsuit?
It's not hypothetical nor an unintended consequence. Most likely this is the point
> Those who are under attack happen to also be the biggest copyrighter holders, so this would open up a new avenue of attack.
Don't threaten me with a good time
Conversely you're already not dealing with that, so the letter and spirit of the law are both being ignored and the American voter doesn't care.
> the American voter doesn't care.
The American voter doesn't know because copyright misuse and malfeasance is on a long list of public-impacting topics that news orgs have rigorously ignored for generations.
>Are people worried they're going to start selectively enforcing copyright law?
Yes. Not only that, but to grant copyright protection only to those that are allied with/loyal to/bribe the current administration.
This would have massive, far reaching effects.
> Are people worried they're going to start selectively enforcing copyright law?
Yes.
Never gotten any emails from lawyers, I see.
Copyright laws are heavily enforced, only selectively.
Are you kidding? If there’s something in there they don’t like I don’t put it past this administration to break it internally and then make a case for shutting it down. This whole thing sounds very similar to the postal service situation…
They will break the system and use it for their friends. No way they are shutting it down. There is way too much money to be made in selective enforcement.
> Are you kidding? If there’s something in there they don’t like I don’t put it past this administration to break it internally and then make a case for shutting it down.
Might be a win? The copyright system is one of the major suspects for why US industry ended up crippled and replaced by Asian labour refusing to respect US IP laws to their significant advantage. To say nothing of the corrosive influence on culture of locking down music and stories. The biggest IP success in the last 50 years seems to have been Open Source because they built a framework inside the copyright system to achieve the opposite outcome and build a thriving industry despite the lawyers trying to encourage them in alternative directions.
The people defending the copyright system should have to keep making their case until they come up with something persuasive for how they're helping.
Tongue in cheek, but the copyright system should only last for 12 years, with one straightforward renewal, without specific reauthorization. Just like copyright in works, in my opinion
> The copyright system is one of the major suspects for why US industry ended up crippled and replaced by Asian labour refusing to respect US IP laws to their significant advantage.
Expand on this.
Wasn't it instead our desire to be the world's reserve currency and rely on cheap imports? You can't be both a net exporter and the world's top reserve currency.
You have to run trade deficits if you want to export dollars.
It comes down to comparative advantages more than anything else and the US raising the cost (in some sense outright banning) people from deploying good ideas in an industrial way seems like it'd be a significant comparative disadvantage to attracting investment. And a much bigger deal than the practical reality that the US imports more than it exports.
Maintaining an import-dependent economy might be a factor, economies are complicated. But there isn't a fundamental reason that taking in more stuff than gets exported should mean that Asia has to be more successful. If anything, a country in a position to import more than it exports should be seeing big jumps in living standards, rather the gains going to a country notionally taking the bad end of the bargain. And there are some easy resolutions to being a net importer and while having a strong industrial economy - import raw materials, make stuff that isn't for export as an example.
I mean, I agree with your general point that copyright might need to be reconsidered, but this doesn't seem like an attempt to reconsider it. It's rather transparently enabling further cronyism.
This is a one-sided article which does not discuss the opposing view, or the reason why they thought congress should appoint. Ironically, if this became law then it might have prevented Trump from removing the librarian as he attempted in 2025 (still pending in the supreme court). It also includes a term limit of 10 years.
https://www.stoneslaw.net/legislative-branch-agencies-clarif...
The plain language of the bill’s summary on the bill’s web page (ignoring the EFF article) explains it quite clearly:
1. Gives power to Congress to appoint/remove the librarian rather than the president (cool, great)
2. Strips the copyright power held by the Library of Congress away, library of Congress becomes a supporting resource like a consultant
3. Reassigns that same power to a different position that’s politically appointed by the president.
What you are saying is technically true, but the deck chairs have been shuffled around in a way that seems to at least partially negate the positive change.
I also find it odd that this was passed in a voice vote. It’s hard for me to tell if that means it has strong bipartisan support? I guess I’d have to watch a video recording of the proceedings to know. If I am recalling correctly, congresspeople can call for a tallied vote if they think the voice vote was too ambiguous.