> 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?
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?