I think this is totally crappy. I see what they're trying to do (create market incentive for consumers to insist on real FTDI chips) but the reality is that it's just screwing over innocent consumers who buy a device.
The consumer isn't exactly innocent.
Hold on, hear me out.
It's similar to black market goods. A consumer wants the lowest possible price. It turns out the goods he bought are stolen property. He didn't know, but he is not waived of responsibility. If he was truly unwitting he will not be prosecuted, but the goods will still be repossessed, etc.
Basically, it is the consumer's drive for the lowest price that creates the market for these illicit goods, so they are not blameless. Additionally, illicit supply chains are hard to attack and often times the consumer "really should have known better", so one of the ways to attack that supply chain is by slapping the hand of the consumer who patronized it, whether or not they actually meant to buy stolen goods.
It's hard to deal with the "Well it was cheap and he was shady but I just didn't ask too many questions" purchases; responsibility is very diffuse, with everyone doing their best to avoid responsibility.
If a Sony product happens to have a fake FTDI chip in it, this is FTDI's way of incentivizing Sony (via angry customers) to manage their supply chain, because as you say there's an incentive even for Sony to cut costs where they can- perhaps by turning a blind eye when they get some suspicious batches of chips for a great price, and claiming ignorance later...
Everyone, in demanding the lowest price no matter what (all the way up the supply chain) bears part of the blame.
We are of course witnessing a visceral response on the part of HN voters reacting to my comment, who are exemplifying why this is a hard problem to tackle. It isn't MY responsibility!
Your use of the word "blame" implies that you think there's some wrongdoing on the part of someone other than FTDI. As far as I can see, there's absolutely nothing wrong with the production and use of these clone chips except that they are being labeled with FTDI's trademark. They're piggybacking on FTDI's software work, but that's nothing that the government has an interest in stopping. If FTDI doesn't like people using their software without buying their hardware, they can resort to more traditional means like not giving out their software so freely or including DRM.
Your use of the word "blame" implies that you think
there's some wrongdoing on the part of someone other than
FTDI.
For example, if I buy an apple iphone I expect to get an apple iphone and if the supplier instead sends me a fake I regard that as wrongdoing on the part of the supplier.
Likewise, if a designer has specified an FTDI part and someone in the supply chain has substituted a fake, I'd regard that as wrongdoing.
Accidental second-sourcing doesn't
really hurt anyone other than the
first source.
If your suppliers can substitute a fake FTDI part, why not label 10% precision resistors as 1% precision, or label 1,000-operating-hour capacitors as 30,000-operating-hour, or label parts that failed temperature range binning as having passed temperature range binning?
And the people who really lose out from this aren't the Apples and Samsungs of this world, who do enough business that the promise of future work can keep the suppliers honest - it's the small manufacturers and kickstarter projects that aren't big enough to have the leverage to keep their suppliers in line.
This is FTDI's way of incentivizing companies using consumers, like I said in my original comment, and it sucks.
I didn't know. But it still gets repossessed, and I'm still out $1k.
(True story, and my first brush with the laws around black markets)
Edit: Apparently I don't proof-read
In this case, screwing the innocent purchaser of a chip that is a knock-off is entirely unwarranted. It's hard to see how it wouldn't be a breach of the Computer Misuse Act 1990 in my country (England), which would seem to make impairing the operation of the component a criminal offence here.
Edit 1: Clarify wording/citation.
Edit 2: If I'm looking at the right company web site, these guys are actually headquartered in Scotland. I'm not sure whether the exact same law applies in their jurisdiction.
These chips didn't fall off the back of a truck. They were in most cases legitimately manufactured and sold to an informal spec.
It's been about 5 years and they've still yet to actually fix it.
EDIT: just realized that I was thinking of the PL2303, which had a similar issue, not FTDI.
If they let it continue more devices may hijack their USB VID, perhaps with bugs and glitches. Should they patch their driver to protect their reputation?
FTDI's responsibility for supporting counterfeit devices ends a long way before tampering with them.
I think the moral high road to take in this situation would be to ignore the clones, but failing that, the approach which Prolific have taken (make the driver refuse to start on a known counterfeit device) seems a lot better than intentionally introducing bugs and not completely ludicrous like damaging the hardware.