FTDI may have just screwe themselves

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FTDI has probably just destroyed itself financially with a really bone-headed maneuver that may well leave it open to criminal charges in several countries (including Canada, and the UK, THE COUNTRY THEY ARE BASED IN).

You've probably never heard of them, but their chips are really common in devices that allow the use of legacy ports through USB, and are also pretty common on a lot of USB devices.  They're also relatively pricy for what are essentially utility chips that do something that's only a convenience for engineers but not really essential (there's lots of ways to interface to USB, and a dedicated chip just makes it really easy).

Basically, they pushed a driver update to Microsoft for inclusion in Windows Update that intentionally damaged clones of their chips, rendering them inoperable unless you use a common but non-standard utility to restore the damaged PID.  As this actually caused the affected devices to become non-functional, even when connected to other computers than the one that damaged them, it generally comes under things like the UK's Criminal Damage charge.  Because Windows Update can operate automatically without any specific user authorization for individual updates, they cannot effectively hide behind the EULA warning that the driver may damage counterfeit chips, since users might never see it.

Apparently, even Microsoft, who've done this to whole computers in the past, is saying this wasn't a good idea.

The driver has been pulled, but the legal and reputation damage is done.

Even if they don't get sued into oblivion and their officers all escape jail (well, gaol, I suppose, it's the UK), they're probably pretty much screwed as engineers now have a solid reason to argue why the should avoid their parts.

Here's Dave Jones' two-for-one video on the subject. (He originally did a rant a few days ago, but didn't get it uploaded earlier due to time issues, and now things have changed a bit so there's a first section recorded later.)

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