That's my guess at least.
No. Rights holders groups asked for it, and they said yes to increase their margins.
Whether the move increases Netflix or not - doesn't matter really. As long as they license someone else's content, they have to play by someone else's rules. If this play also increases Netflix's margins, so be it - all I care about is having access to movies.
I imagine that Netflix as a distribution platform may wield more power than you imagine.
Don’t think they can ignore the VPNs without significant legal issues and potentially losin much of their content.
They block VPN's and other tools because their contracts with content providers say so.
It even says it right in their terms of use
4.3. You may view the Netflix content primarily within the country in which you have established your account and only in geographic locations where we offer our service and have licensed such content.
Don't get me wrong, requiring someone to disable a VPN to use the service is bullocks. But some services don't have much of an option. From what I understand Netflix is aggressively trying to obtain world-wide rights for their whole library, but until the old dog content producers get on board they'll have a rough time.
Correct me if I am wrong.