Arguably you could say HDCP isn't legal either since the master key is leaked and it is no longer an "effective technical measure" it isn't really as anyone can make new HDCP keys themselves. But HDCP still is allowed to disable user equipment and is not banned in the EU and I don't think is facing any current legal challenges. Also with HDCP 2.2 it is just going to get even "better...", now it will be not backwards compatible, have distance latency checks, and all sorts of fun stuff.
Could we put this HDCP red herring out to pasture, please?
All that HDCP does is that Bluray discs can update a table of revoked keys and potentially "brick" unauthorized Bluray players. That is most likely illegal as well and the studios could get sued if someone got their player damaged like that.
You seem to imply that because nobody got sued, it is somehow legal, thus what FTDI did is legal too. Nonsense - the big difference with HDCP is that in order to legally (because of patent licenses, not applicable in FTDI case) implement a Bluray player, you must license the HDCP and agree to implement this sort of "feature" (and get the player certified that it does!). The Bluray consortium is extremely vigilant in stopping the unauthorized players from hitting the markets - typically via customs (same method as Fluke used to stop Sparkfun meters, Apple stopping sales of Samsung phones over patents, etc.). That is what FTDI should have done instead.
It is thus extremely rare that someone gets bitten by the player key revocation, thus the likelyhood of a lawsuit is very low - basically only greymarket imports can get affected, where you know that you are buying a product not intended for your market and thus all bets are off, not something you buy at Amazon in good faith (like a generic serial to USB adaptor), for example.
It is a difference between designing-in a killswitch and actually using it. Doesn't make it any more legal to brick the players, but the chance of actually doing harm to legit users (and thus getting sued) is fairly low. Basically HDCP is only "legal" because nobody has bothered to sue over a bricked grey market $200 player yet, that's all. The directive/DMCA protections don't apply here at all - nobody is trying to circumvent the protection mechanism. Also you have ignored the part 48 about not interfering with the normal functioning of the device.
Also you rarely get a critical equipment depend on a Bluray player - unlike something like the FTDI USB bridges, which can be parts of complex machinery and where breakage costs millions in lost production, for ex. I can guarantee you that the lawyers would come out in force should that happen somewhere - it is not end-user's responsibility to verify that all chips in his machine are genuine.
I wonder what other BS analogy will you come up with.
AV equipment costs a lot of money and some of my stuff is far more expensive than a serial cable USB adapter. At the university we have HDCP problems too with equipment an order of magnitude more expensive and complex. If a key gets revoked in some professional installation setup the damage can be extreme and it only takes one invalid key to break an entire device chain (Nice of them to not tell you anything other than the HDCP handshake failure behavior that I dread to see). Maybe you thought a splitter looked great for the application but it turns out that device works perfectly and is fully complaint but someone stole the key from the mfg and now your installation doesn't work at all. Say it was an information display system now its all blank. (My nvidia GPU in my desktop clearly doesn't like some switches I have and they probably have revoked keys)
It isn't just Blu-ray players that have key revocations. HDMI, Displayport, DVI, wireless links all have HDCP x.x support and important systems need displays and GPUs, switches, matrix switches, video processors, ... all are products that can be affected. Arguably complex systems are bound to have lots of displays (control rooms, media systems, info displays, ...) and if one day your AV setup dies because someone updated a firmware/driver and the blacklisted keys were updated it isn't going to be easy to fix especially with HDCP 2.2.
Now see were getting into the "harm" level just as you claim FTDI causes total destruction because your USB converter needs 1 minutes work to bypass a DRM. I raise that by the hours/days and hundreds to thousands of dollars spent fixing HDCP "compatibility" issues in various systems. Arguably HDCP is much more common than RS-232 and HDCP is a true pain to deal with if you actually have complex setups that are not just a bluray player to a TV (HDCP is very widely in use).
And then we are getting to the you must be using fakes or shady equipment which is very similar to FTDI just in HDCP it is worse because it doesn't care if you have real and professional sourced equipment. Again the comparison of HDCP to FTDI is apt and HDCP is far far worse.
Don't give me the BS thing when I've personally dealt with both situations (the FTDI PID 0000 case for me was caused by students having fun but that was a joke compared to HDCP doing "fun" things) And of course suing them is no chance situation like FTDI and with HDCP it is very hard to debug by design of course.
Again it isn't blurays that are the only things that contain revocation lists they are just the most common ones there are many other sources (TV's with audio return for example will count as an HDMI source in that mode and must by the standard push out revocation lists as well)(AV recievers, GPUs, ...)
So just like FTDI can disable a 5$ chip with a joke bypass, HDCP can literally brick 1000's of dollars worth of legit equipment and make entire systems break down without any messages, warnings, tools to help you find the offending component(s) while FTDI does the same to one chip and all it takes is pressing force driver install to bypass. Once an HDCP device stores its own blacklisted key it will not work with HDCP and removing the blacklist is not simple.