It's ass-backwards (any law that makes 40% or more of the population a potential target of financially-disruptive lawsuits is not a reasonable law), but let's n

It's ass-backwards (any law that makes 40% or more of the population a potential target of financially-disruptive lawsuits is not a reasonable law), but let's not get hung up on technical aspects of copying. It's obvious that ISP routing copies, and similar types of copying, involve transient copies that are quickly discarded and not consumed by anyone. The case law actually recognizes this difference. Legally, "copying" a work means meaningful copying, not merely copying data from one place in memory to another place in memory where it stays for a while until it's freed or garbage collected and then overwritten.