Earlier quoted context omitted.
Rather than being hard coded in the law the Copyright Office can add or remove them, however, just because something is not explicitly permitted does not mean it's automatically illegal. The intent seems clear "No person shall circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title." And the important bits: (2) No person shall manufacture, import, offer to the public,…
As long as his work is not directly setup so people can pirate content I really don't see how you could read the law you quoted and reach that conclusion. If you post a tool that breaks DRM and you don't fit into one of the very narrow exemptions (and geohot doesn't), then you broke the law. It doesn't matter if you intended the tool for piracy or if it was "set up for piracy" or if anyone ever used the tool for pira…
Inference: "Circumvent" means to bypass or disable so any method that disables protection must therefore also "Circumvent" it.
Rebuttal : If "circumvent" implied simply disable then you would not be able to turn a PS3 off or damage it. Melting down old PS3's and selling them for scrap and novelty bookshelves would destroy the DMCA protection, but the modified device is not going to break copyright law.
Counter Inference: That's an argument from absurdity we are not arguing about an inter object but a device capable of running copyrighted software illegally.
Counter Rebuttal: A 300$ general purpose computer may also run come copyrighted software illegally. However both the modified PS3 and the cheap computer run the same range of Sony's protected software without significant further modifications. We can even demonstrate that running PS1 games is simpler on the computer.
etc on down the rabbit hole.