“You agree not to attempt to, or assist another person to, circumvent, reverse-engineer, decompile, disassemble, or otherwise tamper with any of the security components related to such Usage Rules for any reason whatsoever.”
- http://www.apple.com/legal/itunes/us/service.html

One big difference between this situation and bnetd: This would go to the Ninth Circuit instead of the Eighth. Yes, the same Ninth Circuit that shot down a copyright lawsuit against reverse engineering in Sega v. Accolade (1992), and again in Sony v. Connectix (2000).

So living in San Francisco is good news for DVD Jon; bad news for any Apple lawyers wanting to fish for liability.

There is also a California statute that renders non-competition agreements unenforceable: California Business & Professions Code Section 16600. Even if 16600 doesn’t literally apply to no-reverse clauses (it’s a stretch), 16600 could easily be interpreted to mean California has a strong public policy against unfair restraints on trade/competition. If this goes to court, I’d like to see the 16600 / public policy defense raised; the court could rule that all no-reverse clauses violate 16600 or public policy, and are therefore unenforceable.