Laws frequently have far-reaching consequences that are totally unintentional. Even the best lawyers writing laws do not seem to be able to avoid this. Here is an example of a law that was supposed to help Universities, but has actually done severe damage to the schools, and to American technology. I saw some of this personally, but was unaware of what caused it until reading the following article.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/07/technology/07unbox.html?partner=rssuserland&emc=rss&pagewanted=all