The author seems to make the simple mistake of convenient for him to watch DRM content in his browser == good for the web.
Providers refuse to provide DRM-free video now because they know that as long as nobody takes the plunge into DRM-free, they can wring marginally more money out of every customer with DRM. But once one company takes the plunge into DRM-free, this model is over. Customers will demand it of the other companies, and the ones who want to stay in business will have little choice but to abandon DRM and the unethical-yet-slightly-more-profitable models that depend on it.
This worked for music. All signs indicate that it's working for books, though that is still in progress. It will work for video, too, if we let it. All that's required is a few more years' worth of patience. Unfortunately, the W3C doesn't seem to get that.
I mean what the DRM software does is make it harder for me to save a copy of a netflix stream to my harddrive to watch later after my netflix subscription has expired.
But it doesn't make it any harder for me to hit up the pirate bay and download the exact same content minus the DRM.
I can understand not caring about junk like cat videos: they are watch once, delete. Streaming makes sense.
Aside that, the pirates fit my wants better than the ones that want my money. I'll spend my money on other things.
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.