[wmf]

A non-lawyerly devil's advocate:

I would argue that a secret key by itself does not qualify as a circumvention tool and thus should not be banned by the DMCA. Unfortunately, by my reading the law does not agree with me and specifically bans distribution of a circumvention "device, component, or part thereof"; it seems like a key is a part of a circumvention device.

Looking at circumvention code itself, I would argue that such code should have no artistic or political expression when boiled down to its functional essence, in which case there is no meaningful free speech issue. If the code did have artistic or political aspects, arguably those aspects could be separated from the part of the code which performs circumvention. For example, the political opinion of being opposed to the DMCA can be easily expressed without using any code.