The anti-circumvention provisions of the DMCA have been extremely damaging to innovation and research in the US. There was a great lecture at defcon 17 about the specifics of the laws regarding jailbreaking and reverse engineering (when reverse engineering actually is legal, usually only to create/implement interoperability).

https://media.defcon.org/dc-17/audio/DEFCON%2017%20Hacking%2...