Rooting your Android device will prevent you from seeing movies rented from the Android Market

Earlier this month, we reported that some Android device holders will be able to rent movies in the Android Market. Right now, only those owning a MotorolaXOOM with Android 3.1 have access to the service, but soon those with a device powered by Android 2.2 or higher will have the opportunity to pay $1.99 to $3.99 to rent a movie for up to 30 days with a 24 hour viewing clock that counts down once you start watching the movie. Well, that is, unless you have rooted your Android phone or tablet.

Those with the Android 3.1 flavored Motorola XOOM who have rooted their tablet are seeing an error message that reads, " "Failed to fetch license for [movie title] (error 49)" when trying to rent a movie from the application. In a response to a question about the error message, Google says that, "rooted devices are currently unsupported due to requirements related to copyright protection." What doesn't seem to make sense is that Google blames the movie studios for creating this policy while other rental services like Netflix and iTunes will work on rooted devices.