There's Apparently Some Serious Drama Brewing Between Elon Musk's DOGE and Trump's MAGA

Elon Musk and Donald Trump's firing of the United States' top copyright official was seen as a boon for the Big Tech agenda — but as it turns out, the new guys are not so sensitive to the industry's needs.

As The Verge reports, most everyone presumed Musk's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) and its anti-regulation stance were to blame for the firing of Register of Copyrights Shira Perlmutter.

The firing came in the wake of her office releasing a preliminary report suggesting that training AI on copyrighted data was not legally considered fair use.

But as it turns out, the men replacing her — Paul Perkins, a Justice Department veteran from Trump's first administration, and Brian Nieves, who works for the Deputy Attorney General — are not DOGE, but MAGA stalwarts who seem bent on tech regulation.

Perkins, Nieves, and Todd Blanche, who was picked to lead the Library of Congress after the former librarian was fired alongside Perlmutter, are "there to stick it to tech," according to one official who spoke to The Verge.

Along with now being the deputy attorney general, Blanche also served as Trump's defense attorney during his 2024 "hush money" criminal trial. As deputy AG, the official is also arguing on the administration's behalf as it seeks to force Google to lay aside 20 percent of its profits to fix issues flagged by the Justice Department.

While the DOGE faction of the president's coalition is all-in on AI and seeks its deregulation, Republican stalwarts were actually upset with Trump and Musk for firing Perlmutter because, as some conservatives believe, AI should be reined in when it comes to copyrighted materials.

"We don’t have to steal content to compete with China. We don’t have slave labor to compete with China. It’s a bullshit argument," exclaimed Trump antitrust adviser Mike Davis in an interview about the firings with The Verge. "It’s not fair use under the copyright laws to take everyone’s content and have the big tech platforms monetize it. That’s the opposite of fair use. That’s a copyright infringement."

With the backdrop of Musk's alleged exit from government, one thing seems to be clear: that the conservative business interests that bolstered Trump to power in 2016 and 2024 may finally be winning out over the technolibertarianism that brought Musk along for the ride.

More on Muskian power plays: Government Furiously Trying to Undo Elon Musk's Damage