“Unable to reverse engineer the chip, Tengen convinced the United States Copyright Office to hand over the source code of the lockout chip, claiming it was necessary for a lawsuit.”
Nintendo locked the NES with a chip, not a law, and controlled every cartridge made for it. Atari’s Tengen beat the chip by lying to a federal office. Other unlicensed makers just zapped the console with a negative voltage spike. Every DRM scheme since has learned the same lesson. The lock is only as strong as the weakest party holding the key.