Though there is no organized conspiracy, this is actually not far from the truth, especially in some areas of content protection. Companies that don't have the in-house technical expertise (music labels), working from an unprotected distribution system (audio CD) are at a particular disadvantage.
At the other end of the spectrum, you have satellite TV. In this area, a lot of money invested and full control of the playback platform have resulted in some strong systems. But still, it took a long time and a lot of cracks of intermediate systems for this industry to become the success story it is today.
Disclaimer: I worked for a company involved in the above.