What's the purpose of the CIL nop opcode?

Question

I\'m going through MSIL and noticing there are a lot of nop instructions in the MSIL.

The MSDN article says they take no action and are used to fill space if the opc

Answer 1

I've also seen NOPs in code that modifies itself to obfuscate what it does as a placeholder (veeery old copy protection).