No One Is in Charge at the US Copyright Office

That's a dangerous assumption to make. Dropping staffing levels at the US copyright office doesn't change the law. The next administration (or even this one, given how fickle Trump can be) may ramp up enforcement again and go after people committing violations during the current period.

And it's not like copyright outside the US is a wild west; most national and international copyright regimes in the developed world are based on the US's system (often because the US has strong-armed other countries to comply).

How does the copyright office enforce the law?

They don't have to. youtube and every other company are doing it for them, only without any of that annoying due process or assumption of innocense or burden of proof or right to recourse or any of that stuff a real public legal process should have.

> go after people committing violations

At this point it’s a bold assumption they’ll go after people violating anything. It’s become apparent the decade of accusations of “weaponizing government” was a projection and the only people they’ll go after are people they consider enemies, whether they’re breaking any laws or not.

That’s the beautiful part of a puppet Supreme Court, you don’t actually need to worry about the laws, you can just make it up as you go.

> Dropping staffing levels at the US copyright office doesn't change the law.

We see this at the patent office, where overworked patent examiners leads to more junk patents being granted. Which is utterly backwards, and stems from viewing patents as something the applicant has earned and needing a good justification to deny them the fruits of their labor, and not as what they are - an enormous restriction on everyone else.