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I remember a Netflix engineer posting somewhere that Netflix needed to implement this for legal reasons.

If they don't require you to keep clicking a button to "request content", it doesn't count as an on-demand service.

I always figured that button was for people who fell asleep or had to leave their computers. It would be trivial to automate that prompt away for a malicious user.

Good point, that is probably true. Or possible so Netflix doesn't waste bandwidth on users that are not even there watching/listening.

not as easy but still, doable by someone with determination and a simple knowledge of computer vision and UI simulation.

It is really trivial, there are several programs that automate UIs, I remember them from trying my hand at automating trading for a game which didn't provide an API :) .

Automate 7 was really impressive, and they're at version 9 now

http://www.networkautomation.com/automate/automate/

Hulu has it too, IIRC.

Also - if you are a real human but fell asleep or walked out of the house/room.