A controversial anti-hacking law came into full force on Saturday, October 28th, making it illegal in the U.S. to bypass any technology that controls when and how DVD movies, digital music, electronic books and computer programs may be copied or used.

The anti-circumvention provision of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), state it is unlawful for anyone to "circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access" to a copyrighted work. it will be a felony to do so for commercial or personal gain and will carry a penalty of up to five years in prison.

We recently discussed this on a phone in radio interview at which thothic commented:

"I think they need to define effective. Under this clause XOR is considered an effective measure (see the Cue::Cat story) and that can be broken with my TI-81 calculator. It's allowing people to get sloppy with encryption, indeed it's promoting it. Why would anyone want to spend the money implementing good security if the law 'protects' them."

Kevin Paulsen did an Article on Security Focus