One thing Droid doesn’t do is stream Netflix, making the platform the object of ridicule to cackling, finger-pointing iPhone owners. Sobbing Androidites who wonder why they can’t stream 30 Rock episodes like the cool kids can only shake their fists to the heavens and scream “Why?”

Netflix’s blog revealed the answer, reporting privacy concerns held back the company from pumping out an Android streaming app. But Droid owners will only be suffering until “early next year.”

Well, that’s true for some Android phones. Depending on your handset type, the suffering could continue indefinitely. From the Netflix blog:

The hurdle has been the lack of a generic and complete platform security and content protection mechanism available for Android. The same security issues that have led to piracy concerns on the Android platform have made it difficult for us to secure a common Digital Rights Management (DRM) system on these devices. Setting aside the debate around the value of content protection and DRM, they are requirements we must fulfill in order to obtain content from major studios for our subscribers to enjoy. Although we don’t have a common platform security mechanism and DRM, we are able to work with individual handset manufacturers to add content protection to their devices. Unfortunately, this is a much slower approach and leads to a fragmented experience on Android, in which some handsets will have access to Netflix and others won’t.

Sounds like a high-stakes game of duck, duck goose.

Netflix on Android [Netflix blog via Wired]

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