"Why is it that you feel that consumers who unwittingly purchase a counterfeit USB to serial gizmo deserve different treatment in the eyes of the law?"
Here in the UK it is not illegal to own counterfeit goods and i'm pretty sure it is not illegal to own them either. Certainly if you had a fake Gucci handbag it would not be removed from your person, unless you was selling the fakes. So that comment is is way off.
Many of these customers have no idea their product is fake or why a company has now broken it for them. As an example, I know next to nothing about electronics but recently got a chrome cast and wanted to root and a few usb micro controllers were suggested as cheaper alternatives to the Teensy to flash with the usb exploit. Even now I don't know if the one I purchased is a fake of something else, as electronics are not my area of expertise. For a company to kill that device with a driver update and for it to become useless to me cannot be seen as morally acceptable by anyone other than those with a twisted sense of judgement. The amount of lost hours such crippling could cause is also not acceptable.
Edit- Reading further this driver issue may actually affect me. After not having much luck trying to flash the image on to the Pro Micro board through linux I booted in to windows and tried flashing though an app there but had issues getting it recognised after the first flash, even though the drivers installed themself. Not been able to do anything with the controller since. Noticed the baud rate stuff so this board must have a usb to serial converter in and there is a good chance it's one nobbled by this update.
Thanks a lot for all that wasted time you utter twats at FTDI!
Biting the hand that feeds IT
