Google Blocks Movie Rentals on Rooted Android Devices
Rooting your smartphone has a great many benefits, assuming you’re tech savvy enough to set it up and utilize them without bricking your device(big if). Of course, manufacturers don’t necessarily approve of the process, and even if you successfully pull it off, you’re likely to run into a few roadblocks. For example, Google’s apparently blocked users on rooted Android devices from watching movies rented from The Android Market and Youtube.
Users on a rooted device will see the following error if they attempt to watch a rented movie from the market: “Failed to fetch license for [movie title](error 49).” Apparently, this was implemented by Google as a result of ‘copyright concerns.’ Even though it kind of sucks for anyone who’s gone through the process of rooting their devices, I suppose I can see where Google is coming from. After all, when you jailbreak any sort of mobile device, it makes it a lot easier to pirate software and the like-even if that’s not what you’re intending to use it for.
Currently the service is only available to the Android 3.1 Motorola Xoom, but Google has plans to start releasing the service to devices running Android 2.2 or higher over the next two to three weeks. Anyone with a rooted Android gadget will have to choose between keeping their superuser priviliges, or being able to rent movies. I’m not sure that’s really a difficult choice for a lot of people. What’s more, other movie rental services (such as iTunes and Netflix) don’t have similar restrictions.
Ah, well. Their platform, their rules, and all that.
(Source: Engadget)
