I enjoy my Android phone a lot because the platform allows me to highly customize my experience. Android users can enjoy a lot of flexibility without having to root the phone, but rooting your device opens additional possibilities. Recently, Google announced movie rentals as a soon-to-be service, but indicated that rooted phones would be excluded from the service. The likely reason is because of the unknown or uncontrolled factors of rooted devices and how that may conflict with digital rights management.

I can’t say that I completely object to the move. Contracts with film distributors are probably difficult to lock down with the notion of a tampered device. Convincing movie studios to stream their intellectual property has been an uphill battle for years and I can see this being a necessary compromise in order for Google to get this service off the ground. But as a user, this just plain ol’ sucks. My device is rooted for completely different purposes, and I suspect most others who are rooted are as well. Frankly, I have no clue how to get around DRM with a rooted device and am not inclined to find out. I suspect I’m not alone.

From my standpoint, rooting my device is more important than streaming/watching movies on my phone. I doubt I’m the only one.