While a bit late to the game, Google’s introduction of offering up movie rentals right from the Android Market Webstore was met with excitement. Sort of. Honeycomb users running the latest version 3.1 can also take advantage of the movie service and rent movies right from the tablet. However, it looks like Google is not allowing rooted users to use the service and are blocking them.
So why would Google do such a thing? Well, if you’re running on Android 3.1 and attempt to rent a movie from your tablet, you’ll be met with an error message. The error explains that rooted devices are not supported due to requirements related to copyright protection. While this would likely be easier to do from a computer, the block could be a result of potentially stealing, or ripping the movie to view elsewhere and have access to it at all times.
Some rooted users may be a bit disgruntled by Google’s move but I’d say it’s smart for the search giant. Google must stay on the right side of the production companies and will only begin to stumble if it allows the potential of things like this to happen. It’s one thing to hack Google’s operating system but it’s another to steal the movies of Google’s partners. Unfortunately, this means that rooted users will be getting the shaft right now, but that could change in the future.
It may suck to be a rooted user right now, but Google must have felt that this would be the only way to address the potential threat. Google could eventually provide some sort of fix for this block but we also wouldn’t be surprised if it didn’t. Whatever comes of this, wouldn’t it be easier just to download the hacked version of the Netflix application which easily has more value?
[Via: ZDNet]