Android Market movie rentals: not for rooted users

It looks like users of rooted Android phones won’t be able to enjoy the movie rental goodness of the Android Market place. It has been reported that rooted devices have been blocked from renting movies from the Google’s movie rental store. Though it wasn’t announced, it is probably due to copy protection, which rooted devices are said to easily circumvent. In case you were wondering, rooting is the process of “freeing” an Android phone of its restrictions, to give its user the permission to modify files on the the phone that they’re normally not allowed to touch. This allows users to really tweak and customize their phones to their heart’s content.

When a rooted Android user tries to rent a movie from the Android Market, they’ll receive an error 49 or “Failed to fetch license.” message. Although the Google movie rental service is only available on Honeycomb devices right now, when it finally makes its way to Froyo handsets and tablets, it’s going to leave a lot of users disappointed.

Kinda goes against the whole Google mindset of having a free and open device, don’t you think? I’m sure that people who hack their phones love watching movies too.

George Wong
Categories: Cellphones, Tablets
Tags: Android, movie rental, rooting