As this newsletter goes out to you, the House Committee on Administration is set to consider HR 6028, the “Legislative Branch Agencies Clarification Act.” The bill springs from the President’s dismissal of Carla Hayden, who was the Librarian of Congress when he took office in January 2025, and his subsequent attempt to dismiss Shira Perlmutter, the Register of Copyrights. Those actions set off a legal dispute about the President’s authority over the Library and the Register, which is still making its way through the courts. This bill seems to be an effort to “clarify” those authorities and the relationship between the Library, the Copyright Office, the President, and the Congress. But in doing so, the bill unwinds a centuries-long relationship between the Library and the Copyright Office. As we warned in our letter to the committee, that’s not an action to be taken lightly, if it’s to be taken at all.
The Library and the Copyright Office have several important points of connection. The most obvious is that the copies provided by rightsholders to the Copyright Office as part of the registration process become part of the Library’s collection. That mechanism has helped make the collection at the Library of Congress the greatest in the history of the world. Any change in the relationship between the Library and the Office needs to be carefully crafted to preserve the Library’s ability to rely on deposits to build its collection for future generations.
The Librarian also has an oversight role over some of the Copyright Office’s policymaking functions, including the triennial rulemaking that creates exemptions for lawful uses unduly burdened by the DMCA. HR 6028 would remove the Librarian from that process, giving the Register of Copyrights the final say on things like cell phone unlocking and DVD ripping for criticism and commentary. That would undo an important source of balance in the DMCA process. The rulemaking process was designed to bring multiple agencies together to represent the interests of different stakeholders, with the Librarian acting as a final arbiter. The Copyright Office has a leading role in the process, but the NTIA is also required by statute to participate and to provide its opinions on proposed exemptions. The NTIA’s recommendations have consistently been more favorable to proponents of exemptions than the Register’s, supporting new exemptions more often than the Register and taking a more user-friendly view of the statute. The Librarian has mostly sided with the Register, but there is at least a possibility that the Librarian could choose to ratify the NTIA’s views on a subject. With the Librarian out of the picture, the NTIA’s role becomes more tenuous. That would be a blow to balance in the copyright system.
I strongly suspect that the drafters and sponsors of HR 6028 are completely unaware of these dynamics. And there’s no reason they should be: this is deep copyright inside baseball, the kind of concern that only surfaces if you give stakeholders time and an opportunity to weigh in. That’s why we’ve reiterated our ask to the House Admin Committee: don’t rush this bill into law.