This is a surprise to read and hear. From Google, Team Android, and everything being “open” this sure looks to be a little different. Obviously Google makes all the rules, and we talked about that in the Skyhook case, but this latest bit of news comes as a bit of a shocker. All we have is a comment on a Google Support page so this may not be completely true, hopefully its not.
Google recently added Movie Rentals to the Android Market starting at the low price of $1.99 to rent a movie. This great service has a lot of people excited and I’ve used it myself and streamed it over HDMI out on my G2x and it works great. Sadly we are now seeing a report claiming that if you are on a rooted device, movie rentals will not be available. Users are reporting that they are receiving this error, “Failed to fetch license for [movie title] (error 49)” and when looking for suggestions on the Google Support Page this was the grim response:
You’ll receive this “Error 49” message if you attempt to play a movie on a rooted device. Rooted devices are currently unsupported due to requirements related to copyright protection.
Something I hope is wrong and simply the first reply we have seen. Hopefully this weekend or Monday we will get more information regarding this. If this is the case it would be a turn in the wrong direction from things being “open” in the android ecosystem. I have complete faith in the dev and hacking community that something would be figured out for us “rooted” users quickly anyways. Just look at Netflix, it launched for a few devices and now is available on just about any phone as long as your rooted. So we will see how this all plays out over the next few days or week.
[via Android Market Support]
Guess which service I won’t be using ever…..
Ooh ooh i know!
Don’t worry hacking community will fix this in a few days.
Wow Google put on their Steve Jobs pants this morning!
that gave me a good chuckle.
Totally unsurprised by this. With a rooted device it would probably be possible to save the movie and pirate it. Don’t expect this policy to change. But to those of you who are rooting your devices, consider for a moment if it’s really worth it for what you need.
This will probably lead to more pirating. I don’t think most people who root their phones are interested in pirating movies. They’ll just find other ways to get the movies, Someone else will make the apps and pirate the movies for them.
I think Google now is coming in
terms with the Apple principle of charging the free services. Android is the
leading smart phone with iphone being a strict competitor. But, now it seems it
is allowing the ios to catch up with the stiff. I think the ban on the movie
rental service is a little uncalled for, as the android hackers will come up
with a suitable action of bringing back the banned service.