I can't bring myself to be bothered by this - and wouldn't be even if I were using these devices.<p>For crying out loud, equipment with unique recorded serial numbers was stolen, so the company is blocking the <i>specific</i> stolen devices. That makes perfect sense to me. Objecting to how they do it (bulking up software with a list of serials, requiring software to phone home, whatever) is fine and their customers have a legit basis to be unhappy if it's impacting their use, but people with the stolen devices? <i>Those aren't SDRPlay's customers because SDRPlay hasn't been paid for those devices.</i><p>Quoting from the article: <i>In a PR disaster the manufacturer gives "Because we can" as an explanation to make end user devices worthless.</i><p>I'll note that this complaint very carefully leaves out a key word: STOLEN. I'm not seeing the PR disaster except that it's going to seriously hurt their image in the community of people who steal stuff from warehouses. <i>tiny violin plays sad music</i><p>If you've purchased one of these, as I said above you're not a customer of SDRPlay or one of its distributors because payment is part of a vendor-customer relationship. You're someone who bought "Bose" speakers out of the back of a white van in a parking lot. Get your money back from the seller - you may even be able to get the police report from SDRPlay if you need it for a chargeback - and tell SDRPlay where you bought it so they can try to track down the thieves.<p>Edit: reading the original SDRPlay forum posts, they ID the specific ebay sellers, note that this is the <i>third</i> time they've had things stolen like this and sold by the same accounts, and note that "We will NOT penalise innocent people so that assumption that this is our intent is frankly WRONG!!" Basically they're likely looking for anything like saved packaging, shipping return addresses, etc. to be turned over to the police. Also, this whole thing is about (in this case at least) a total of 39 devices. We're not talking about thousands of people affected.<p>SDRPlay: <a href="https://www.sdrplay.com/community/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3225" rel="nofollow">https://www.sdrplay.com/community/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3225</a>
Sounds like a reasonable thing for any manufacturer to do if your supply pipeline is prone to large-scale theft and your goal is to deter further incidents. The best option obviously is to fix the pipeline, but that takes time and not always doable in practical terms.<p>Caveat emptor. Buying from a 3rd party and presumably at a deep discount always carries a risk of goods being stolen.<p>PS. FTDI case is of no relevance here - they were bricking devices of _other_ vendors, not their own.
Is this really that different from blocking stolen mobile phones from connecting to mobile networks via their IMEI number?<p>The database behind that is apparently shared internationally between mobile networks, and most people would find a phone unable to connect to anything but WiFi useless.
I used to always be pro-consumer in cases where the manufacturer does something like that to clones (Salae and FTDI cases)<p>After slowly getting into the manufacturing game myself and after USPS auctioned some of my cute early engineering samples that ended up on ebay, I definitely think this is totally reasonable from the manufacturer. Also the title of the article is already attacking the manufacturer. If you brick the devices, you hurt the person stealing and indeed it seems that this wasn't the first time it happened to them. On the consumer side maybe a discount would also be a nice gesture.
People who receive stolen goods have <i>always</i> been kinda screwed over - it's been part of our laws forever. Even if one isn't charged with a crime, one will lose the goods, and likely never recover their money.<p>The reasons for this are obvious - to make it as hard as possible to sell stolen goods. The effects encourage the innocent purchasers to have some level of caution when looking at buying goods.
> <i>Those that do and assist us in tracking down the thieves will be treated VERY sympathetically.</i><p>Does that mean they'll unbrick their hardware? That's about the only sympathy I'd expect after purchasing a product in good faith, and discovering that it was bricked or disabled by the manufacturer.
Sony offers to block stolen PlayStations. It's a similar case - you may buy a used item that may suddenly stop working. Moreover, Sony does cooperate with authorities re locating those devices. You may have a surprising visit.
Seems totally acceptable to me. The comparison with the FTDI incident is not really applicable here because those were not stolen parts, just replica/clone parts.
Those who bought stolen devices should return them and ask for a refund from EBay. You are generally not allowed to resell stolen goods, although I am not sure if EBay is liable here.<p>> Back in October 2014, the FDTI manufacturer shipped a device driver that ... would make any operating system stop seeing the device by setting its USB product ID to 0 , basically killing the USB device.<p>Well, if that id can be set to 0, it can also be set back to original value, isn't it?
Wouldn’t it be pretty trivial to remove the blacklisting code?<p>It’s not like this is a cellphone sold to my mom. It’s an extremely specialist product aimed at a group of users with vast electronics and reverse engineering knowledge. Probably won’t be long before one of them reverse engineers the device and releases the code to ignore the blacklisting.<p>Anyone know the technical details of how the blacklisting works?
If they can do this before it is sold (eg: theft) and remotely prevent the device from working, how do users defend against having this done later for more capricious reasons?<p>Everything I've learned, is that for capabilities like this, the good reasons are the justifications, and then the owners migrate to less good reasons. The overall distrust I have with these kinds of systems are that they are Treacherous Software/Hardware. This capability is something that shouldn't be implemented. No user in their right mind would - but the companies that wish to retain ownership rights after sale do.<p>I would also object to this 'hacking of these devices' as violations of CFAA. Yes, the devices had lost chain of custody, and were reported as stolen. That doesn't allow any entity to then engage in more illegal behaviors exigent to the initial situation. If I am being robbed, I am allowed to defend myself and my goods. However I cannot stalk the robber, and then bash his/her kneecaps in after the fact. 2 wrongs, separated by time, do not make a right.