I wonder what would happen if you uninstalled ADE? Even though you haven't had to run it, it might be necessary for it to be installed. Also, I wonder if ADE runs in the background on startup. Sony, as well as Adobe and Apple, are very bad about having their software/services startup with the computer. I know the Reader Library is set up to run services when you start your computer.

Back to the original question. If you want to use certain Python scripts to strip off the ADE DRM you will need to have ADE installed, at least initially.