Honest question -- is it conceivable that the work is never "fixed" on some physical medium? Years ago, I thought "internet law" was a silly concept -- but as in the case above, the letter of the law might not be enough to support the spirit of the law.

Hard drives are a physical medium.

http://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/fixed_in_a_tangible_medium_of...

But is memcached on RAM?

I'm not super familiar with memcached, but either memcached on RAM "is sufficiently permanent or stable to permit it to be perceived, reproduced, or otherwise communicated for a period of more than transitory duration", or memcached is talking to a persistent database (i.e., HDD) in the background. Because I can read posts on that blog that are over a year old.

The recent Blizzard case found that making a copy of something into RAM created a fixed copy of it, I believe.

Remember, intellectual property rights are all thought-crime laws. They don't have to make sense.