Where did this "editing a copy makes it transformative" meme come from? Legally, transformative means "created a substantially new work" not "mechanically applied a style change that preserves all of the original content and its original value"

By that logic adblock, readable mode, applying your own css and making the text bigger with cmd-+ is 'copyright' infringement since every modification is modifying some copy in memory.

It's a bunch of legal laymen conjecturing on legal issues.