in my view, DRM is counterproductive, and results in lost sales.
Instead of just selling one version of the DVD, world wide, Hollywood goes and gets greedy. The result, the rest of the world is offended by the action and pirates the DVD instead of buying it.
Hollywoods view on region coding is to comply with American censorship standards. Our movie content is tightly censored and regulated, compared to Europe's debauchery. So the censors wanted a way to control what you watch, so you can't go buy that eastern european pr0n flick and watch it on your 108" plasma tv, at least, not without committing a few felonies along the way.