I'm still a little confused as to what the situation is here. With a rooted Android phone, are all non-free market apps unavailable, or just ones with copy-protection? For non-free, un-protected apps (are there any?), can they be purchased directly and installed on the phone without going through the market?
I don't have any problem purchasing any apps on the market. As far I know all paid apps show and I can purchase said apps. I have purchased several protected apps since I was rooted.
This topic still seems a but fuzzy. We had a customer with an unlocked phone who wanted--but couldn't find--our app. He and I did a comparison of what we saw in the market, and he saw only unprotected apps. Another customer was using a rooted phone and was able to download our app, but it wouldn't run properly because of the protection. [This guy later found joy when the updated the cyanogenMod ROM to fix the problem. So if you're rooted, maybe try this ROM to get love from the Android Market] Scott