There is nohing in DRM that is hidden or secret. You are misunderstanding the difference between the technology and some actual implementation of this technology. Microsoft, Apple, Sony and the likes are using proprietary algorithms that are unknown to others. They decided that these algorithms shall be hidden from any eyes but theirs. I don't believe it's a clever move, but it's their choice, and the direct consequence is that the user is locked up on a given platform.
But DRMs are not, by essence, closed or anything like that. In fact, most DRM code is plublicly available (think the RSA encryption algorithm, or DES, or AES, which are all used in a large variety of DRMized systems, including pay-per-view TV ; Viaccess, for instance, is using AES - see
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viaccess).
The Netflix problem is in fact a poor choice on Netflix behalf. There are proven DRM systems that are not tied to any vendor, and do not require any kind of licensing. But they chose to elect a proprietary system which is bound to be more fragile than a similar, open one. Their choice, their mistake (so don't blame DRMs for that).
Regarding "binary blobs" from Adobe: Flash is not protected. You can find code everywhere on the web to play flash without an Adobe flash player. The fact is, since Adobe FP is free, there is a very limited set of people who find an interest in getting a clone running. See
http://www.adobe.com/devnet/swf.html.
Regarding "binary blobs" from NVidia: man, these are **drivers** ! They reveal a large part of the hardware design choices. Why should NVidia give this information to AMD (or to any other concurrent) for free? The "everything shall be Open Source" hits a philosophic wall here: if I cannot protect my products against my concurrent - because here, the problem is not the user -, why should I spend millions to develop them? I'd prefer to wait for my concurrent's product, check his design choices, and make an incremental enhencement. This way, I saved millions on R+D, and I still have a better product than him.
If OSF zealots had seized the power in the 80's, we would only be able to play Id's Rage on a console - a 80x25 one, I mean.
