DRM bug in Android 4.1 Jelly Bean rendering paid apps unusable

It's no secret that Google Play has more than its fair share of piracy problems, which is why the Android operating system's latest release, 4.1 Jelly Bean, features App Encryption.

Unfortunately, it looks like Google's preventative measure is currently causing more harm than good, with hundreds of developers reporting that their paid apps have been rendered unusable. This is apparently the result of account information and other stored data being deleted upon a device reboot.

Paid apps on Jelly Bean-powered devices are stored in an encrypted folder at /mnt/asec rather than the normal /data/app folder, and this is apparently part of the problem.

While the exact cause of the bug is yet to be discovered, it's believed by many developers that Android's Account Manager is simply not equipped to handle the apps' new location.

To combat this issue, Google has turned off DRM for the time being.

Still, in spite of this temporary workaround, developers aren't happy. According to a Google Code thread, Google has been aware of this issue since mid-July. Before the search giant pushed Jelly Bean to the Nexus S, in other words.

Google is expected to release a proper fix for this bug in a future version of its Android operating system.