[robomartin]

@LeifCarrotson

You are making the mistake of taking a hypothetical and arguing against it. These are contrived examples designed to communicate a concept rather than an absolute reality that one should argue against.

I'll just say that it is very common to see comments relating to hardware issues on HN from people who obviously don't have experience building hardware at scale. And so, it is hard to discuss these things due to the asymmetry of knowledge and experience.

Any non-trivial hardware development and manufacturing operation has or should have professional supply chain management. It is their responsibility to ensure they build product as designed by engineers. If the hardware engineer specified an FTDI chip he or she did not mean "anything that is labeled similarly to FTDI". No, they meant to design in an FTDI chip. Anything else could fail or perform differently at any time.

Blame for the bricking of devices given a change of driver code isn't with FTDI, it is with whoever manufactured the product that was supposed to use FTDI chips and did not.

Let's also mention the very real potential for someone knowingly using clone chips in order to save money.

It is preposterous to charge the chip manufacturer with this responsibility.

There could be many tentacles to this kind of an issue, but the manufacturer ensuring that their drivers only work correctly with their chips isn't anti-consumer at all, quite to the contrary.

Yet another angle: The crappy clone manufacturer --who could not care less about the consumer-- make a bad chip and it is the responsibility of the legitimate manufacturer to write the drivers and ensure it works well? In what alternate reality is that reasonable or required?

[fulafel]

You are talking about compatibility but the FTDI case was a case of the company intentionally shipping malicious code used to brick the clones, no? Quote from article: "the latest driver bricks the fake chips, rendering them inoperable with any computer"

[robomartin]

Well done. They have the absolute right to create drivers that only work with their products in order to assure quality, performance and function.

Fault is at the feet of the clone makers and those who used clone chips, not the legitimate manufacturer.

I am actually astounded by some of these responses. However, I do understand that they likely come from a lack of experience delivering hardware products at scale, and so I can't fault people for getting it wrong. Hence my favorite quote:

"A man holding a cat by the tail learns something he can learn in no other way" --Mark Twain

[pugz]

No one is disputing that "they have the absolute right to create drivers that only work with their products in order to assure quality, performance and function." - that's a given.

Would you say that they also have "the absolute right to create drivers that sabotage counterfeits of their products"?

That's a different argument. You could argue that they should have the right given that (elsewhere you have argued) their governments have abrogated their responsibility to protect their IP. And that would be an interesting and compelling argument. But it's entirely different to "[having] the absolute right to create drivers that only work with their products in order to assure quality, performance and function." - and it would be disingenuous to keep arguing that.

[javawizard]

What part of:

> the FTDI case was a case of the company intentionally shipping malicious code used to brick the clones

don't you understand? FTDI does indeed have the absolute right to create drivers that only work with their products, but to intentionally damage a third party product so that it no longer works anywhere else, including with that third party's drivers, seems egregious.

[robomartin]

There are two issues here, and they are separable.

One is the issue of intellectual property theft and what a company has a right to do in order to protect itself.

FTDI invested massive amounts of money to produce excellent solutions for a number of problems. I have personally been using their chips in my designs for over twenty years. I don't even remember when I started, it's possible it was at the very start of their history.

The fake chip makers --mostly in China-- steal intellectual property with impunity, hurting companies, ecosystems and costing job. In some cases they have completely imploded companies in the West.

We can either accept this at our peril or take a stand against it. The only people who are OK with intellectual property theft are those who don't understand the subject or haven't lived it.

My experience? I've had the experience of mortgaging my home to fund a business and then watch a company out of China clone my product and bring it into the US and European markets at half my price. I can't even begin to describe what this did do my business, the people who worked for me, my family and my health. I didn't lose it all because I am a resilient SOB, but it put me in the hospital twice in four years due to the stress.

It's really easy to voice opinions from behind a keyboard when the consequences of said opinions carry no personal consequences.

A company like FTDI and their products did not materialize from nothing. There are people, families, investment and hard work behind such offerings. Clones are not a victimless crime.

The other issue, of the two that I said were separable, is the damage to consumers due to fake chips being bricked by FTDI.

That, in my mind, is a separate matter and a very complex one at that.

There are at least two angles to this one. The first is that the hardware they were using was intentionally made with fake FTDI chips. This is likely the case for most cheap hardware coming out of China. If that garbage doesn't work it is 100% the responsibility of the designers of the hardware. They are thieves. Plain and simple.

If, on the other hand, the designers of the hardware had no idea and fake chips got into the supply chain, the problem is far more complex. At that point it is a question of tracing the supply chain in order to understand, if possible, how it happened. I won't go into the many permutations this could put on the table. Suffice it to say that anyone dealing with China knows full-well what they could be in for. Caveat emptor applies in the case of the OEM.

This is where the problem becomes far more complex and it becomes political. It is our politicians (US/Europe) who allowed us to come to a moment in time where an entire country is openly stealing intellectual property at almost every layer in industry as well as freely distributing it across the world with impunity. This is a far larger problem than a bunch of USB devices getting bricked because a company in Europe decides to defend themselves from what must be a massive loss of revenue of unimaginable scale. I can only imagine what FTDI could be, the people they could employ and the technologies they could develop if fakes could not exist in the market.

Counterfeit products have real and non-trivial consequences to entire societies and their existence should not be taken lightly.

I don't have the solution to this problem. Sadly, it's political. What I do know is that I'll be damned if I am going to blame the victim.

[pbhjpbhj]

> The only people who are OK with intellectual property theft are those who don't understand the subject or haven't lived it. //

Perhaps you think it strengthens your argument to use a miscategorisation that both you and most of your readers know to be a false equivalence. It does not. It shows you're happy to ignore the truth in order to cast those you disagree with as criminals; or, you're ignorant, which I doubt.

You don't need to be happy with IP infringement in order to be not-happy with corporate (group A) [criminal] destruction of the property of others (group C) based on tortuous infringement of a third party (group B).

Not to mention that IPR goes against an established culture in the country of some of the infringers (group B).

TRIPS Art.35 requires IC circuit layouts to be protected for 10 years (as in 17USC S.904), IIRC. I don't know Chinese law though, perhaps IC related IPR has lapsed for the chips in question?

The OP headline chip is 20 years old (edit: I had the date wrong). Counterfeit, trademark infringement, is wrong of course.

>What I do know is that I'll be damned if I am going to blame the victim. //

You seem happy that one of the victims, the unwitting purchaser of an item having an copied FTDI chip in it, gets punished? In preparation of the sui generis IC mask rights the USA senate committees apparently were careful to ensure that users - "innocent purchasers" they're referred as - could only be punished by paying a royalty and that devices would not be destroyed or confiscated. That seems balanced and avoids punishing victims beyond what is reasonable.

[robomartin]

Thanks for posting a constructive fact-based comment.

The question of who the victim is under the FTDI scenario is a really interesting one and likely one that is difficult to resolve with absolute certainty. By this I mean that the consequences of various permutations of potential and actual actions require the benefit of time in order to fully grasp. All we can do is attempt predict outcomes based on experience, knowledge of technology, markets, and, of course, the bias every human being brings to the table.

It is important to note that FTDI devices don't just exist in Windows PC's. They are part of a wide range of products covering an unimaginable range of applications. Defects in clones, therefore, can have an equally large and unknowable range of consequences.

In my case I see two scenarios.

The first is what took place: FTDI was forced to retreat, effectively allowing millions of clones to exist unencumbered and without suffering any financial or legal consequences.

On first inspection forcing FTDI to back off was a pro-consumer stance. The victim, in this line of argument, was the consumer and FTDI --to be dramatic-- was the evil greedy corporate actor wanting it all. How dare they!

It is interesting to note that in this narrative the true criminals, the counterfeiters, never seem to be characterized as the culprit, when in fact, they are. It is easy to demonstrate that the marketplace would be safer without fakes.

This, BTW, applies to any product category, not just chips. Simple example: Fake dog food that could potentially kill your dog because the producers don't really care and have no responsibility or accountability to society, whether it be legal or moral.

And yet, if you analyze this scenario, it is also easy to demonstrate that the actual long term outcome is precisely opposite to the desired outcome (protecting the consumer).

How?

By forcing a retreat at such a high level (FTDI devices are everywhere) the message was clear: Counterfeit chips got away with it, will get away with it. Legal and market forces only care about the here and now and will force legitimate companies to not interfere with counterfeiters.

One might say "Nobody issued a statement even remotely resembling what you just said".

True. Nobody ever does. We are defined by our actions. Society and individuals. In this case society cared more about immediate effects rather than the promotion and maintenance of a healthy ecosystem based on laws and regulations that, among other things, respect intellectual property and ownership rights.

The net result of taking this path is easy to predict: Nobody is ever going to challenge counterfeits because of the way the marketplace --due to shortsightedness-- pushed back on FTDI. Nobody wants to be the focus of a mob.

And so we are now in a situation where consumers, because of this path, will remain the victims for decades to come. Today, they, quite literally, have no idea what's inside the devices they purchase and legitimate hardware manufacturers dare not challenge counterfeits for fear of what the mob might do.

This is, at least to me, a clear case of good intentions not thought through to completion actually causing more damage to consumers in the long term in exchange for a short term benefit. This is why I think it was a terrible decision not to take the pain, support FTDI, repair/replace devices and send a strong message to counterfeiters that they risk going bankrupt rather than the opposite.

Part of that encapsulates the second scenario, one where counterfeiters are not allowed to derive financial gains from their operations. That would have been the true pro-consumer stance. And one that would have delivered a future where consumers could have a reasonable certainty of quality, safety and performance from the products they purchase.

I am not going to lay the entire responsibility of the counterfeit problem on the FTDI event, that would be preposterous. However, this was a very clear cause-and-effect case where one choice was to punish counterfeit makers (and the companies who knowingly use their products to increase profits) and the other was to think consumers were being protected by pounding down the legitimate manufacturer when, in reality, the outcome was precisely the opposite when a long term view is taken.

I can't imagine anyone making an argument proposing the unencumbered proliferation of counterfeits (anything, not just chips) is good for consumers. I think what was done with the FTDI case was extremely shortsighted and damaging.

[fulafel]

I don't think it's productive to go around saying "an entire country is openly stealing intellectual property" here any more than citizens of other countries saying the same thing about US as a nation and personal data. IPR is a contentious field of intl agreements band there are no moral absolutes. But damaging physical property is pretty clearly unlawful in most jurisdictions.

[panpanna]

Since you are blindly defending FDTI and blaming the designers, let me add another crucial detail that might change your mind:

A lot of fakes were distributed through reputable sources as originals. So you could for example build a medical device using expensive original components from digikey, only to see it breaking in the hospital for no apparent reason.

I bet people have _died_ due to FTDIs actions.

[DanBC]

> A lot of fakes were distributed through reputable sources as originals. So you could for example build a medical device using expensive original components from digikey

Medical device manufacturers would want both certificates of conformity and traceable parts. They'd want these if they built the product themself; they'd specify this if they got a sub-contract manufacturer. If the component supplier can't offer traceability back to the real manufacturer you'd probably want to buy from someone else.

https://www.jjsmanufacturing.com/blog/traceability-in-electr...

I don't think bricking the devices is the right thing for FTDI to do. The consumer friendly thing to do is give warning and an FDTI contact email to report the product so FDTI can talk to the manufacturer.

[panpanna]

The problem is that these devices came from legitimate sources with the right paperwork.

[DanBC]

I find it hard to believe that anyone got traceability information with these fake devices.

I can't understand how a component supplier would comingle their traceable stock.

EDIT: since this is getting downvotes.

A component supplier would destroy customer trust if they supplied fakes with traceability certificates. It would mean anyone building for aerospace or military or medical or mining or etc etc (all large, multibillion dollar industries) would have to avoid that supplier. So what's in it for the component supplier?

I accept the fakes are common. I accept people bought fakes from reputable suppliers. What I don't accept is that people bought fakes when they asked for traceable components. I don't accept that companies buyign direct from FTDI got fake components.

[robomartin]

> I bet people have _died_ due to FTDIs actions.

I'll bet that's an exaggeration. If you are going to say something like that you have to back it up with data.

I could just as easily make the claim that people have died due to fakes. We can do that and go round and round a silly pointless circle.

The problem of fakes is real. And it is likely very much political (addressed in another comment). What is is NOT is the legitimate manufacturer's fault, even if they defend their existence by refusing to allow fakes to function with their drivers.

Fake chip manufacturers are perfectly free to do the required R&D, issue and support their own drivers. However, they are thieves, and prefer to steal rather than do the hard work and take the risks their victims undertake.

[sokoloff]

> if they defend their existence by refusing to allow fakes to function with their drivers.

I don’t think anyone is arguing that FTDI has to let those chips be supported by FTDI drivers. I believe that intentionally sabotaging devices that have clone chips in them (such that they won’t work even once disconnected from the computer running their driver or that the device will be damaged simply by plugging it into a computer with that driver) goes well beyond simply “refusing to allow fakes to function with their drivers.”

That’s not OK, IMO.