https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/food/2024/10/29/mcdonalds-mcflurry-ice-cream-machine/75914325007/A broken ice cream machine is a familiar inconvenience to McDonald's customers.Franchise owners have complained about difficulties fixing the machines, McDonald's itself has poked fun at how often the machines are seemingly broken, and there is even a dedicated independent site for customers to see when and where they might be denied a McFlurry.Those worries may soon be a thing of the past, after the U.S. Copyright Office issued a new set of exemptions last week that allows restaurants to repair equipment used in "retail-level commercial food preparation," which includes those soft-serve ice cream machines used to make McFlurrys.Public Knowledge, a consumer advocacy group, and e-commerce website iFixit petitioned the U.S. Copyright Office for the exemption, which went into effect Monday."There’s nothing vanilla about this victory; an exemption for retail-level commercial food preparation equipment will spark a flurry of third-party repair activity and enable businesses to better serve their customers," said Meredith Rose, senior policy counsel at Public Knowledge.Right to repairSection 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act makes it illegal for third parties to bypass digital locks on any copyrighted materiel, including software used in commercial devices like those McDonald's ice cream machines, even for repairs.What that has meant for McFlurry fans until Monday is that every time an ice cream machine in a McDonald's location breaks or has any kind of technical problem, it can only be repaired by the manufacturer and copyright holder.
Since 1956, McDonald's has partnered with the Taylor Company, an Illinois-based manufacturer, for its ice cream machines, leaving only the Taylor Company with the "right to repair" them.According to iFixit, which looked inside a McDonald's ice cream machine last year, the devices contain "lots of easily replaceable parts."Rose called the new exemption "an overdue shake-up of the commercial food prep industry."
Thank you Joe Biden.
>>1358143>iFixit>YouTuber Steve Porter's channel TronicsFix>Steve has done videos on repairing Apple products>YouTuber DankPods has shown how to repair iPods>Dell encourage owners of their computers to do their own upgrades, repairs etc via making technical manuals available & engineers give advice on company's official forumDell supplies components to PartsPeople.com, who produce disassembly advice videos on YouTube>iFixit sponsors TronicsFixWhat do you bet that Steve Porter makes a video on how to repair a McDonald's ice cream machine?
Had no idea it was a copyright thing.
Based Biden, Trump would have never done this!
>>1358143>icecream machine broken as someone who worked at mcdicks, our ice cream machine always worked especially since we cleaned it late at night according to the actual maintenance schedule
>>1358161I remember it being a run joke over the ice cream machine being a scam because only a specific person was allowed to fix it.Good that Biden did this and not just pay lip service like Trump.
>>1358173Yeah, I'm so ready for moldy ice cream. I'm sure the machines shutting down had nothing to do with most of the minimum wage retarded workers not even doing the utmost basic cleaning and maintenance. Now they can figure out how to unlock the things and turn them back on even though they can't be assed to sanitize them properly! Yipee!
>>1358161It's not. The blacks at McDonalds didn't want to do it. If there's still a white area in your city go to the white McDonalds.
>>1358339I see you're completely unfamiliar with the situation. Here's an explainer. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SrDEtSlqJC4
yum
