[belorn]

"Notwithstanding the provisions of section 106, it is not an infringement for the "owner" of a copy of a computer program"

If you do not have a licensed permission from the author, you now have to prove that you are the legal owner of the copy. It could be said that they intended to address people who pirated a copy from a torrent site (or a BBS, since this is before the time of torrents), but its a major claim that someone can own a copyrighted work without, 1) purchasing it, 2) having a copyright license to it.

When it comes to GPL in particular, the question is also if the recipient is a owner or a licensee. The license text specifically call "you" to be equivalent with "licensee", which makes the claim of ownership even more dubious.