[shasta]

> The anti-circumvention provisions criminalize the distribution of not just software that can be directly used, but anything that serves as a tool to violate copyright.

I'm not a lawyer, but I'm going to speculate that if you upload image.bmp, a picture you took with your camera, that happens by coincidence to contain a key that can be used for circumvention, then you would not be prosecuted or convicted. In other words, it's not the number that's illegal.

[ewillbefull]

I'm not speaking about accidental violation of the provision, I'm even talking about intentional violation. Anti-circumvention provisions don't cover the copyrighted work, they don't even cover a derivative work. It's just suppression of speech that tangentially supports or encourages illegal activities, which the Supreme Court has ruled the government has no compelling interest in quelling.

A lot of this speech can take many forms. It can be blog posts delving into how some encryption scheme works, it can be keys that are derived mathematically from Sony's mistakes, and it can be software which may only incidentally be used as a tool to circumvent DRM. This does not survive strict scrutiny.

[adrianN]

But does it become illegal if someone (maybe not even you) points out that starting at bit 123094 you find the key to unlock your PS3?