How to remove legal notice from MOTD / Banner for non-root users

Question

Problem:

The following text is shown for all non-root users when logging in via SSH:

The programs included with the Ubuntu system are free software;
the exact distribution terms for each program are described in the
individual files in /usr/share/doc/*/copyright.

Ubuntu comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by
applicable law.

---

Configuration:

• My /etc/ssh/sshd_config includes:

  PrintMotd no   
  PrintLastLog no                                                       
  

• PrintMotd no and PrintLastLog no are overriden by PAM in /etc/pam.d/sshd

  session    optional     pam_motd.so 
  session     optional     pam_lastlog.so   never showfailed
  

• /var/run/motd is symlinked to /etc/motd:

  /etc/motd -> /var/run/motd
  

• The folder /etc/update-motd.d/ is empty!

---

Question:

How can I disable the display of the above notice for non-root users?

Solution 1

• clear/remove /etc/legal that contains the message

... or ...

• create a file ~/.cache/motd.legal-displayed

Read more: ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1511335

Solution 2

I use Ubuntu 20.04, a release newer than sam's answer. The very old thread cited there was closed 11 years ago and doesn't mention the method I used to fix the problem: emptying the 3 files in /var/lib/ubuntu-advantage/messages.

root:/var/lib/ubuntu-advantage/messages# ls -l
total 0
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 0 Sep 11 03:10 apt-pre-invoke-esm-service-status
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 0 Sep 11 03:10 motd-esm-service-status
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 0 Sep 11 03:09 ubuntu-no-warranty

I found it (and some other files I ignored) by executing this:

find / -xdev -type f -exec grep -l 'ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY' {} \;