No equipment was destroyed by the old driver: the old driver set a word in the firmware of counterfeit devices to zero. All that needs to happen to reverse what some comment-writers are calling "bricking" is to set the word back to its original value. The new version of the driver could probably do that.
I'm not an expert on USB protocol, so I'm not sure how your suggestion would work. The driver bricks it in the sense that the Product ID of the device is wiped (zero'd). As a result, the OS doesn't know what to do with it or what drivers to connect it with.
Is there some signature to the USB device that would allow the OS to know what to do with the affected gizmos? Or do you have to explicitly tell the system "no, really, the device on this USB port is specifically this"? If it's not automatically deployed like the initial driver but rather actually requires the user to screw with firmware-style updates, then it's effectively ruined for many beginners with these chips. (Thankfully, there's been a lot of fuss over this, so newbies will likely be able to troubleshoot this problem after a few hours of groping in the dark for why their device has gone silent.)
Dang. If a person's not familiar with the ins and outs of USB protocol, I'm going to bet they're not going to be able to think up or through that procedure. At best it'd just be some incantation to recite in the hopes the gizmo comes back to life. And if you're using the FTDI chip specifically because it abstracts away serial to USB communication stuff, well, hopefully the device is cheap enough to just replace.
Still, perhaps it could be automated somehow via a responding Windows Update? That's the thing that gets me - it was autmatically propagated, it oughtta be automatically fixed.
Bricking is exactly what you describe - the device is not usable after the driver sabotages it. Bricking is a common description of a device made non-functional by interrupting a firmware upgrade process. It's not destroyed, and can be restored to functionality by special tools. But as far as the user is concerned, the device is broke.
"Bricking" doesn't mean a device is completely demolished, just that it's basically been rendered into a useless lump, especially via corrupt firmware. Even a 'hard' bricked device can sometimes be recovered via JTAG.
They really should. Class actions are an inferior mechanism for both parties anyhow. The lawyers sitting in the middle will make it so it's radically more expensive for the company, and the odds of the supposed "winners" of the class action suit will probably get uselessly small vouchers for service rather than actual replacement.
"Class actions are less about compensation and more about forming big enough sticks to beat misbehaving corporations about the head with.
"
Class actions were never about this until recently . The original purpose was to make it easier to manage the case (vs 50 separate cases) for the justice system. It was about "the efficient administration of justice". Nothing more, nothing less.
When they were created (out of thin air) in the US, this was the goal. AFAIK, nobody thought about, or wanted, what has happened now. It's not even a good vehicle to accomplish "beating misbehaving corporations" , because when used for that purpose, it mostly makes money for lawyers, encourages nuisance suits, etc.
