U.S. Federal Courts have accepted the proposition that loading
software into RAM makes a copy. See, e.g., MAI
Systems Corp. v. Peak Computer, Inc., 991 F.2d 511 (9th Cir.
1993) This means that a user must have explicit permission from the
Copyright owner of software to run it.
Though
the idea of "loading to RAM is making a copy for copyright
purposes" strikes nearly every programmer and power user as
ludicrous, until a suitably powerful court
reconsiders it, that's the state of the law. It is a measure of how
far the content producers (including software publishers) have
extended their rights in the digital realm.
There is an
legislative exception to this rule, codified in 17
U.S.C. §117 (a), that specifies that such a copying
is not infringement, but the exception applies only to owners
of copies. There are some decisions from Federal Courts that lay out
who is, and who is not an owner. In those cases, the courts are
distinguishing between "mere licensees" and owners. Those
decisions are not strictly applicable here. Since the ate_utils.c
file was not properly included in the kernel tree, there's no chance
that the end user is a licensee.
It is certainly possible to
boot and run a Linux distribution from a CD-COM disk -- there's no
absolute requirement that the software be copied to a hard disk. That
expedient removes one possible infringement. To eliminate the copy to
RAM, a Linux distribution could be manufactured on a flash memory
device, created in a static RAM module, or built into a ROM chip.
Using such a distribution would not entail copying the software
anywhere; the programs would be directly accessed on the
memory device. Currently technology for all these methods is much
slower than using RAM, but necessity is the mother of invention.