Because if you don’t support it you won’t be able to play any protected content on it which means no AppleTV, FireTV or any other TV box at least above 720p SDR.

Thanks so it is just a roadblock. Please excuse me to keep going: most things either play or don’t play depending on that HDCP (yeash HD CP :s), but if I strip it away using say the second output of a splitter it will play. Is it the case that for example appleTV box will only output 720 if it doesn’t get some kind of positive handshake?

Allow me to add that every time I’ve removed it I’ve had full licensing and permissions, just that HDCP was in the way.

Yes if the source device does not get a handshake and a continuous one as there is one at least every 7ms they won’t display content or display it in a degraded form.

Same goes for not supporting HDCP of a specific version e.g. a display that supports only HDCP 1.3 but not 2.0 will be able to display 1080 Blu-ray’s but not 4K ones.

Yes in theory you can rip it off however that is very expensive and difficult especially with more recent standards (I’m not aware of any way to strip HDCP 2.1 and higher) and bandwidths.

Also to strip it you still need to get a license and keys so it would be quite difficult to do so on a commercial basis especially in a country with strong rule of law.

It's strange that a company as large as Walmart has a shopping category dedicated to "HDCP Strippers" at https://www.walmart.com/c/kp/hdcp-stripper. Upon further research, I stumbled upon numerous YouTube videos, such as https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W5-PJpSfDJ8, where the user was able to strip away HDCP 2.2 and still achieve 4K@60Hz output. The user also mentions that it would work with a 120Hz panel. This raises the question of how Walmart is able to get away with this, despite the rule of law.