H.R. 6028 could reshape who runs the US Copyright Office, and how AI music cases get judged

A bill moving quietly through Congress would change who controls copyright in the United States, and the music industry is barely watching. H.R. 6028, the Legislative Branch Agencies Clarification Act, would pull the US Copyright Office out from under the Library of Congress and rewrite how its leader is picked.

That sounds like plumbing. It is not. The person who runs the Office shapes the official position on whether training AI on copyrighted songs counts as fair use, the question sitting at the center of every major AI music lawsuit.

What H.R. 6028 would actually do

Today the Register of Copyrights is appointed by the Librarian of Congress and answers to that office. H.R. 6028 would break that link.

The bill would remove the US Copyright Office from the Library of Congress’s supervision. The Register would instead be nominated by the President and confirmed by the Senate, serving a 10-year term with the option of reappointment. Before any nomination, the chairs and ranking members of the House and Senate Judiciary Committees would jointly recommend three candidates the President may consider, and the Register would have to be a US citizen with a background in copyright law.

The bill’s backer in the House, Rep. Griffith, argued the Register should answer to the President because the Office “performs executive-like functions” such as registering copyrights and issuing regulations. He compared the move to how the Architect of the Capitol was handed to a bipartisan commission in 2023.

Why H.R. 6028 surfaced after the Perlmutter firing

This bill did not appear in a vacuum. It arrives in the middle of a fight over who gets to run the Copyright Office at all, a fight that started the moment the Office questioned AI fair use.

Perlmutter sued on the argument that only the Librarian of Congress, not the President, can appoint or remove the Register. A court agreed and put her back. H.R. 6028 would hand that appointment power to the President by statute, which is why the timing has people uneasy.

What H.R. 6028 means for AI music cases

Fair use is the whole ballgame in the current cases. It sits at the center of the Suno and Udio lawsuits and the music publishers’ fight with Anthropic. If training on copyrighted catalogs is not fair use, every AI music company has to license or rebuild.

The Office does not rule on those suits. It does shape the policy reading that judges, lawmakers, and licensing teams lean on, which is exactly why the same officials keep getting booked for industry events like next week’s AIMP publishing summit.

Music attorney Kevin Casini, a Quinnipiac law professor who advises rightsholders, flagged the bill on LinkedIn and said the industry is asleep on it.

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The quiet restructuring of copyright governance is happening in plain sight.

Why critics want H.R. 6028 slowed down

The pushback is not only from creators. A coalition that includes the Re:Create Coalition, the Library Copyright Alliance, and the Center for Democracy & Technology has urged Congress to slow down, arguing that separating the Office from the Library of Congress deserves full hearings rather than a rushed markup.

“We urge Congress to halt the rushed passage of H.R. 6028, which risks serious unintended consequences,” said Re:Create Executive Director Brandon Butler, warning of effects on innovation, free speech, and education.

For working musicians, the bill is worth tracking for one reason. The rules that decide whether AI training ever pays you run through this Office, the same machinery behind proposed disclosure efforts like the CLEAR Act. You can read the full breakdown at Music Business Worldwide, and the Office’s own AI work sits at copyright.gov.