Now I am not a lawyer, but I think by analogy the FSFs interpretation would also be needed to enforce the CreativeCommons NoDerivatives licenses. Imagine someone creates an interview-based documentary video series on a controversial scientific topic say global warming and releases it under a NoDerivatives license because they are afraid that a clever edit of their videos would present the topic incorrectly and they have made promises to the scientists about how they will and will not present them.
Now imagine that I rather than edit the video files themself create a playlist, in a (fictive?) format which has the ability to play subsequences of the linked files, and then creates a version of the series which presents the complete opposite message of the original. Would a court find this to be a derivative work of the original videos? What if in my need to edit the video I want to insert certain new short sequences, and thus I distribute a second video along with the playlist, but this video is useless in itself since it just contains a number of short clips in sequence. Would this video be considered a derivative work of the original - remember it serves no purpose in itself except along with the playlist and the original? To me it is not clear, but if they are not derivatives, then this will practically render the concept moot. Since most derivatives could potentially be formulated as the original + a diff. Now I would expect in this case that the combination of the playlist + my video file + original series be considered a derivative work, remember that in the arts transferring a work from one format to another (a dramatization for example) is considered to be a derivative work, even if all the actors would be seen on stage to read from the original book.
As I read it, this is the center of the FSFs argument. Now whether this would apply equally to software I do not know. But I have a hard time imagining that copyright is not as easily circumvented as you seem to indicate.