[butlerm]

Congress has changed the law since MAI v. Peak specifically to allow users to create copies and adaptations of software programs as an essential step in running or utilizing the program in question on a machine, or for limited archival purposes (i.e. backups).

"Adaptation" is another name for "derivative work". So it would appear that it is not a copyright violation for an end user to load or dynamically link modules with incompatible licenses into ram, or statically link them together, or make binary modifications, as long as what they are doing is necessary to use the program.

It might still be a license violation of course, but it is probably a fruitless exercise to go after users who are exercising what are ordinarily considered to be well established rights necessary to use the software, the very thing that made MAI v. Peak an unfortunate ruling that Congress had to fix. Surely that sort of thing - even by third party technical support - should have been considered fair use from the beginning.

[tsimionescu]

> Congress has changed the law since MAI v. Peak specifically to allow users to create copies and adaptations of software programs as an essential step in running or utilizing the program in question on a machine, or for limited archival purposes (i.e. backups).

That's not entirely true, as far as I understand. The rule that a user may copy the work to RAM as a fair-use exemption already existed at the time of MAI v Peak. However, it was found not to apply, since the person that loaded the program into memory was not MAI's client, but a Peak employee, who was fulfilling a separate contract with MAI's client, and who had never legally obtained a copy of the work from MAI (which would have entitled them to load it in memory themselves).

Basically, the court at the time found that if I have a copy of Windows from MS, I am allowed to copy it into memory and run it. But, a repairman I hire is not allowed to load my copy into memory and run it themselves, unless they also legally own a copy of Windows.

However, Congress did amend copyright law in light of MAI v Peak, to extend the existing fair use exemption for copying into RAM to people acting as service/repair contractors.

[butlerm]

Thanks for the clarification on that. Either way, MAI v. Peak was kind of a disastrous decision that presumably could have easily been resolved under fair use for the service contractor. Congress included Section 107 for a reason, and no doubt part of the logic is that courts use it instead of creating a make work program for Congress on the subject.

That would seem to go double for whichever court decided that ephemeral copies in RAM are "fixed" in a "tangible medium of expression", in direct contradiction of the plain meaning of the term.