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Good, destroying a device you legally purchased is unacceptable, whether you knew it was a counterfeit or not. It's not their job to police that kind of stuff.

Good, destroying a device you legally purchased is unacceptable, whether you knew it was a counterfeit or not. It's not their job to police that kind of stuff. Failing to work with counterfeit devices is completely fine and would have been a much better approach than straight up bricking them.

kstrauser 12y ago
And that's assuming it's actually counterfeit. Can you imagine the storm if "isCounterfeit()" turned out to be less than 100.000000% accurate?
- serf 12y ago
  Yeah, but looking at the physical differences between the chips it's probably not something that difficult to ensure. The counterfeit chips are built in a totally different fashion, with different size and materials, on a different process tech. http://zeptobars.ru/en/read/FTDI-FT232RL-real-vs-fake-supereal http://zeptobars.ru/en/read/FTDI-FT232RL-real-vs-fake-supere...
  - joezydeco 12y ago
    But that's impossible for something like a Windows driver to determine. The only way the FTDI driver could determine if the chip counterfeit was a slight difference in how the counterfeit chips handled a certain EEPROM write. And the counterfeiters will be sure the next revision of the chip takes care of this corner case.
    - sliverstorm 12y ago
      Sure, the driver doesn't know the manufacturing process. His point is the chips are simply so different, there are bound to be obvious ways for the driver to tell.
      - joezydeco 12y ago
        If the chip manufacturer needed this incredibly subtle trick to determine a real chip from a fake at the driver level, what does that say about how close the counterfeiters got? The chip dies may be incredibly different, but the fake operated 99.99% like the real one. There were no "obvious ways" to tell them apart.
chrisBob 12y ago
In the US there isn't a legal way to purchase counterfeit goods. It may be different in other countries. Similar to stolen property, the person left holding the bag gets in trouble too. Edit: after actually looking up the issue instead of guessing it turns out that in most places (other than France and Italy) there isn't much at stake for the end user, and almost all of the laws are written to stop the sale or manufacture of counterfeit items.
- Igglyboo 12y ago
  Yea but I highly doubt anyone is going to get in trouble for buying goods they genuinely assumed were real, only to have been lied to.
- potatolicious 12y ago
  > "In the US there isn't a legal way to purchase counterfeit goods." Sure, but the mechanism for combating counterfeiting is the government and law enforcement organizations, not unilateral action by the aggrieved party. FTDI has no authority - moral or legal - to be bricking devices. This is vigilantism.
- the_ancient 12y ago
  It is however perfectly legal to make a hardware device that could make use of the Same API and driver i.e a clone. Provided it is not branded as a FTDI chip, but rather "FTDI Driver compatible" Now that may violate the terms and lic of the driver software on windows (not on linux because it is GPLv2) but that would not make it illegal to buy nor would it give them (FTDI) the legal right to modify that hardware
  - chrisBob 12y ago
    Using the FTDI vendor ID is branding it as an FTDI product. I would argue that it is even more important than the text printed on the chip since that is the part of the brand that the average end user is exposed to.
    - welterde 12y ago

kstrauser 12y ago

And that's assuming it's actually counterfeit. Can you imagine the storm if "isCounterfeit()" turned out to be less than 100.000000% accurate?

serf 12y ago
Yeah, but looking at the physical differences between the chips it's probably not something that difficult to ensure. The counterfeit chips are built in a totally different fashion, with different size and materials, on a different process tech. http://zeptobars.ru/en/read/FTDI-FT232RL-real-vs-fake-supereal http://zeptobars.ru/en/read/FTDI-FT232RL-real-vs-fake-supere...
- joezydeco 12y ago
  But that's impossible for something like a Windows driver to determine. The only way the FTDI driver could determine if the chip counterfeit was a slight difference in how the counterfeit chips handled a certain EEPROM write. And the counterfeiters will be sure the next revision of the chip takes care of this corner case.
  - sliverstorm 12y ago
    Sure, the driver doesn't know the manufacturing process. His point is the chips are simply so different, there are bound to be obvious ways for the driver to tell.
    - joezydeco 12y ago
      If the chip manufacturer needed this incredibly subtle trick to determine a real chip from a fake at the driver level, what does that say about how close the counterfeiters got? The chip dies may be incredibly different, but the fake operated 99.99% like the real one. There were no "obvious ways" to tell them apart.

chrisBob 12y ago

In the US there isn't a legal way to purchase counterfeit goods. It may be different in other countries. Similar to stolen property, the person left holding the bag gets in trouble too. Edit: after actually looking up the issue instead of guessing it turns out that in most places (other than France and Italy) there isn't much at stake for the end user, and almost all of the laws are written to stop the sale or manufacture of counterfeit items.

Igglyboo 12y ago
Yea but I highly doubt anyone is going to get in trouble for buying goods they genuinely assumed were real, only to have been lied to.
potatolicious 12y ago
> "In the US there isn't a legal way to purchase counterfeit goods." Sure, but the mechanism for combating counterfeiting is the government and law enforcement organizations, not unilateral action by the aggrieved party. FTDI has no authority - moral or legal - to be bricking devices. This is vigilantism.
the_ancient 12y ago
It is however perfectly legal to make a hardware device that could make use of the Same API and driver i.e a clone. Provided it is not branded as a FTDI chip, but rather "FTDI Driver compatible" Now that may violate the terms and lic of the driver software on windows (not on linux because it is GPLv2) but that would not make it illegal to buy nor would it give them (FTDI) the legal right to modify that hardware
- chrisBob 12y ago
  Using the FTDI vendor ID is branding it as an FTDI product. I would argue that it is even more important than the text printed on the chip since that is the part of the brand that the average end user is exposed to.
  - welterde 12y ago