[tsimionescu]

> The other, maybe more familiar idea to lawyers, and maybe more plausible to you, is the one in MAI v. Peak, that running is copying by definition.

That is a bit over-simplified. The important part in MAI v. Peak was that Peak was a third party to the license between MAI and their client. The court recognized that MAI's client had the right to load/copy the program that they had acquired from MAI into memory without any additional license from MAI - there was already an explicit exemption in copyright law for this. However, they decided that this right can't be extended to a 3rd party (Peak, who as acting as a support technician), even if on the same machines.