It does. Internet Service Providers actually track connections to DCMA content violators. I've been dinged a time or two when I accidentally connected to a stream or torrent directly from my network. With a VPN, you have a secured connection to the VPN provider, which then connects to the content provider. The VPN folks don't keep logs of their connections and usually are not based in the US, so those DCMA requests to them fall of deaf ears and there's no way to trace the connection back to you.
For $40 a year it's cheap insurance that the ISP dogs won't come chasing after you.
SFIAH