And in both situations, each company is giving its competitor coarse-grained data about its customer base (Netflix in real time, Apple with a few months' lead).
If Netflix hasn't put DRM on their stream, someone monitoring the pipe could easily get the zeitgeist of what movies are being streamed.
Um, ever tried to stream Netflix video from anything that wasn't running the latest Silverlight? Or diverting/capturing the video from the stream, even on an authorized client?
That's why there's still no Netflix client for Android or Linux, and why Netflix probably doesn't have to worry too much about content sniffing.
If Netflix hasn't put DRM on their stream, someone monitoring the pipe could easily get the zeitgeist of what movies are being streamed.