Hmmm...that's a fair point. It would definitely be copyright law, but I'm not sure if it would actually work. I know downloading copyrighted material into RAM still counts as a violation, so the argument would probably be that running the software illegally copies code they have no rights to from storage to RAM.
> I know downloading copyrighted material into RAM still counts as a violation,
Maybe in some jurisdictions, but I’m pretty sure many places exclude copies necessary for the operation of the software to not be violations of copyright law.
I mean, extend the same reasoning to web pages. Your web browser downloads a web page (let’s pretend this does not count as a copy). It keeps the HTML in an in-memory cache. The browser then sends the HTML to its internal renderer, which renders the page. Boom, a copy of the HTML (or at least a derived work of it) now exists in the renderer. Have you now violated the copyright of the page author?
