Two different crimes, one confusing law

Copyright infringement is illegal — copying and distributing something you don't have rights to. That's intuitive. What's less obvious is that U.S. law, under Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), separately makes it illegal to bypass a digital lock protecting copyrighted material, even if the underlying use would itself be completely legal.

That means jailbreaking a device, ripping a DVD you own for personal backup, or modifying software you legally purchased can all trigger liability purely for the act of getting past the lock — independent of whether you infringed anyone's copyright once you were past it.

The exemption treadmill

Congress anticipated this would be too broad, so every three years the U.S. Copyright Office runs a rulemaking process where people can petition for narrow exemptions: this specific act of circumvention, for this specific purpose, is allowed for the next three years. Past exemptions have covered things like jailbreaking phones, repairing tractors, and ripping DVDs for classroom use.

The catch is that each exemption is narrow, temporary, and has to be re-argued from scratch. An exemption for repairing farm equipment doesn't cover repairing a wheelchair. An exemption granted in one cycle can lapse if nobody re-petitions for it in the next. It's a slow, expensive, recurring fight over what should arguably be a settled question: whether you're allowed to open something you own.

Why this specific rule is a flashpoint

Section 1201 sits at the center of the right-to-repair and DRM fights described elsewhere on this page, because it's the rule that makes circumventing a lock dangerous even when the lock itself is the only thing standing between you and a repair, a backup, or basic interoperability you're otherwise entitled to.