Hollywood has a serious piracy problem with all their content distribution channels. The entire industry is dependent on a network of third party distributors (

Hollywood has a serious piracy problem with all their content distribution channels. The entire industry is dependent on a network of third party distributors (theaters, DVD duplicators and retailers, hotel PPV, cable channels) that would much rather profit off films without paying for them. Hollywood spends tons of money and effort enforcing these deals, plugging leaks, and putting down the criminal syndicates acting as middlemen in the pro piracy world. The possibility that Internet video distribution will open up new and interesting ways for their distributors to rip them off keeps Hollywood execs up awake at night. Until very recently (or possibly, the near future) it hasn't been possible to do large-scale, for-pay video distribution on the Internet without doing a bunch of intrusive tooling on the client side to make the streaming work right anyway. They might as well demand that Netflix, etc. build in DRM while they're at it. I would also be really surprised if Netflix's DRM systems weren't tightly integrated with the accounting and auditing systems that measure what Netflix owes the film distributors. Basically, you're not the target of the DRM systems, and "Content Protection" is a perfectly reasonable thing that's effective enough everywhere but the last-hop retail streaming to users. There, it's just an afterthought and a habit, not something that actually helps the bottom line.