DMCA makes a crime out of a contract breach (Score 2, Informative)

The difference should be important. But only in terms of educating the lay public about what is going on here. The point is really moot as far as Sklyarov's case goes. Copyright protection is a matter of civil law, not criminal law. Copy protection should be a matter of contract law and civil law because that is what software licenses are for.

This is why the DMCA is so draconian; it has made a crime out of the violation of a private agreement to not copy a piece of software. If the license for the software says, "thou shalt not copy and distribute this software" and you accept the license, you have entered into an agreement with the software manufacturer and are liable for civil damages should you violate that agreement. Then the DMCA comes along and says that if you invent a way to defeat built-in copy protection of a given piece of digital data you have committed a crime. It doesn't matter what you do with your invention; just the act of inventing it is a crime. This seems a little bit like thought-crime. So this issue really has nothing very much to do with Copyright and has more to do with cracking an encryption scheme -- regardless of whether or not you actually copy the software or distribute it.

So if you want to argue the fine points of semantics, don't lose sight of the real issue; that the mega-corp lobbies of Amerika have pushed through a bad law that makes a crime out of a civil breach.