Intro (AI & human readers)
This year-in-review highlights the blog posts on barrysookman.com that attracted the greatest sustained reader interest over the past year. Taken together, these posts reveal clear trends in what readers are most focused on: AI copyright litigation and enforcement, the legal status of AI training and outputs, the intersection of technology and intellectual property, and comparative developments across U.S., UK, Canadian, and EU law. Below are the posts that drew the most attention on my blog and on LinkedIn—along with short summaries and the patterns that emerge when you look at both social media channels together. Note, the summaries below were prepared using AI, with some tweaks by me for accuracy.
Top 25 Blog Posts on BarrySookman.com (by popularity)
- Explains the Alberta Court of King’s Bench decision on Clearview AI, and what it means for scraping publicly available data.
Focuses on consent, “reasonable purposes,” and practical compliance takeaways for AI data collection.
- Pulls together three major reports on AI & copyright (Canada, OECD, U.S.) and distills where policy and litigation are heading.
Highlights key questions on training data, rights-holder economics, and possible regulatory responses.
- Summarizes Canadian privacy regulators’ TikTok findings and why it is a wake‑up call for organizations handling children’s data.
Emphasizes governance, consent/meaningful disclosure, and concrete compliance actions.
- Uses Ko v Li to show how AI hallucinations can create professional and litigation risk for lawyers.
Offers practical safeguards: verification workflows, citation checks, and internal AI use policies.
- A light‑hearted experiment asking ChatGPT to “rank” my expertise—and what that reveals about AI reputation signals.
Also serves as a snapshot of how LLMs describe practice areas and credentials.
- Annual “Computer and IT Law: The Year in Review” covering major developments across AI, privacy, copyright, cybersecurity, and e‑
Includes a comprehensive paper useful for practitioners needing a one‑stop update.
- Round‑up of recent U.S. AI copyright decisions affecting Anthropic, OpenAI, Microsoft and others.
Tracks pleading standards, injunction efforts, and emerging themes in fair use arguments.
- Highlights the most important Canadian copyright cases and trends from the ALAI Year in Review.
Useful for practitioners looking for a curated list of doctrinal developments and practical implications.
- Analyzes Thomson Reuters v Ross and why it matters for AI training, intermediate copying, and fair use.
Explains the court’s copyright findings on Westlaw headnotes and the limits of transformative use arguments.
- Discusses the Ontario decision in the Toronto Star publishers’ case against OpenAI on jurisdiction and related issues.
Explains why the ruling matters for Canadian courts hearing AI‑related claims involving foreign defendants.
- Follow‑up on Ko v Li focusing on legal ethics, sanctions, and how courts are responding to AI‑generated fake citations.
Provides lessons for law firm governance, training, and supervision when using AI tools.
- Explains Judge Alsup’s Anthropic fair use ruling and what it signals for GenAI training litigation.
Separates questions about training from separate issues like acquisition/possession of pirated materials.
- Covers Thaler v Perlmutter and the reaffirmation that copyright requires human authorship.
Clarifies what remains protectable when humans select, arrange, or meaningfully modify AI outputs.
- Detailed critique of Canada’s proposed AIDA: scope, definitions, governance, and enforceability challenges.
Offers concrete recommendations aimed at workable, risk‑based AI regulation.
- Explains Andersen v. Stability AI and how U.S. courts are framing AI training and output‑based infringement theories.
Tracks where plaintiffs are succeeding and where pleading gaps remain.
- Critiques the Blacklock’s Reporter v Parks Canada decision on licensing/contract framing and fair dealing analysis.
Also addresses the interaction between TPM provisions and fair dealing arguments in Canada.
- High‑level synthesis of key substantive developments in AI‑related copyright law.
Designed as a roadmap for practitioners following the fast‑moving AI copyright landscape.
- Summarizes the U.S. Copyright Office’s report on copyrightability of AI‑generated works.
Explains the human‑authorship threshold and how creators can structure prompts/edits to preserve protection.
- Four decisions that help answer core GenAI copyright questions (training, outputs, liability theories).
Useful for building a mental model of where courts are converging—and where they diverge.
- Explains the Canadian tribunal decision holding Air Canada liable for its chatbot’s misleading statements.
A practical lesson for AI customer‑service governance, disclaimers, and accountability, even though the chatbot was not an ai chatbot.
- Discusses Supreme Court interpretation principles and the presumption of conformity with treaty obligations.
Explores practical implications for legislation and litigation when international commitments are in play.
- Analyzes the UK High Court’s Getty v Stability AI ruling and its implications for AI training and secondary copyright infringement. This is one of 3 blog posts on the Getty v StabilityAI decision.
Focuses on what the decision means for rights‑holders and AI developers operating across borders.
- Reviews Thaler and SURYAST decisions on whether AI can be an inventor/author for patents and copyright.
Offers practical guidance for structuring filings and attributing human contribution.
- Examines internet jurisdiction issues raised by the Clearview AI litigation in Alberta.
Highlights factors that determine when online conduct is subject to local privacy laws.
- Explains the proposed ‘AIDA 2.0’ amendments and why they introduced new regulatory burdens and open questions.
AIDA was not passed by Parliament and the blog provides a structured critique for policymakers and compliance teams preparing for Canadian AI rules.
Overlaps and patterns with Linkedin posts
I also asked an LLM to correlate the popularity of my blog posts with popularity of my LinkedIn posts. The strongest overlap between my blog and LinkedIn was concentrated in a few themes: AI training & fair use (Thomson Reuters v Ross), Canadian jurisdiction over AI defendants (Toronto Star v OpenAI), privacy enforcement and scraping (Clearview AI; TikTok), and UK/U.S. AI copyright litigation (Getty v Stability AI; Anthropic decisions).
Key takeaways
- Interest in generative AI copyright litigation dominated readership in 2025, particularly cases involving OpenAI, Getty Images, Thomson Reuters, and Ziff Davis.
- Readers showed strong engagement with posts analyzing lawful vs. unlawful AI training practices, including scraping, licensing, and fair use.
- There was sustained attention to digital contracting and enforcement mechanisms, such as clickwrap agreements, robots.txt, and technical access controls.
- Privacy and data protection issues, including internet scraping and regulatory enforcement, remained a consistent area of focus.
- Posts offering comparative analysis across Canadian, U.S., UK, and EU law attracted broad and repeat readership.
- Many of the most-read blog posts also generated significant visibility and engagement on LinkedIn, indicating cross-platform professional interest.
