I was basing the "redistribution" on the idea that you can lend a book to someone. As long as only one person's reading the content at any time, it's not copying. Of course, there's *some* copying going when dealing with computers, but only internally. In any case, the fine points of the law in a case like this are out of our hands (and probably haven't even been tried in course). But as far as ethics go, I see no problems.
Does that mean that if Microsoft takes GNU software, modifies
it, and "lends" the resulting binary to its customers, you don't see any
problems when it comes to ethics?