IFIXIT: Victory Is Sweet - We Can Now Fix McDonald’s Ice Cream Machines
IFIXIT: Victory Is Sweet - We Can Now Fix McDonald’s Ice Cream Machines
The Copyright Office just handed down a big Right to Repair win: we can now legally repair commercial food preparation equipment, including McDonald’s machines.
This is a nice win for self-repair hardware rights.
For context, see their old video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2uCpY3tFTIA
Ah this bit is sad. The exception only covers bypassing DMCA protections to fix your own stuff not distributing the tooling for it.
It is still a crime for iFixit to sell a tool to fix ice cream machines, and that’s a real shame. The ruling doesn’t change the underlying statute making it illegal to share or sell tools that bypass software locks. This leaves most of the repair work inaccessible to the average person, since the technical barriers remain high. Without these tools, this exemption is largely theoretical for many small businesses that don’t have in-house repair experts.
McDonald's franchisees being forced to buy one specific problematic ice cream machine is ducked up on it's own. Let them choose what works.
Why would you buy an ice cream machine from McDonalds? They have bland food and cut cola with hygiene problems in their ice machines.
If you run a franchise, you have to get the machine from a specific vendor. That vendor makes a killing charging for their techs to come over to fix those machines. There's some videos on YouTube that explain how the scam works.
"You are allowed to repair the thing you own"
I don't think I've ever ordered ice-cream from McDonald's. Not exactly the type of product I'd go to a hamburger joint for.
That's all I used to go there for, but not sure if it's different ice-cream in Europe.
you cant sell/buy a tool but i wonder if you can hire a contractor to build you one.
This was exactly what I thought. You could start a staffing company that supplied skilled temp workers with this skill set.
This company sure has been making the rounds on the internet. I estimate maybe 1-2 years before they decide to cash in on their goodwill with some kind of monetary product
Ifixit? They've been selling tools for years, and they're great.
I am honestly not sure if you're joking or not
That's great, but I'm sure Taylor (ice cream machine manufacturer) will still void your warranty, and McDonald's corporate will still tell you you're required to have Taylor service it. There were blackboxed control bypass devices for these machines that let them run longer and self-clean better, but McDonald's sent out a memo requiring all franchisees to remove them and only allow Taylor to work on those machines.
While there is feel good framing, write ups like this just reinforce what a dystopian hell hole we live in. It is depressing.
You're not wrong, but I'd still encourage everyone to celebrate the small victories. If we wait for perfection it may never come.
Sweet! Sub par soft-serve for everyone!
It’s not even cheap anymore :(
Was McDonalds ever cheap in the first place?
Maybe not now since we can hack it
Thumbnail isn't even a Mcds unit.
Well they weren't allowed to before
World on fire and there are people worried about repairing ice cream machines of an evil corporation and consider it a "victory". Depressing
Repairing things helps reduce the endless resource expediture and trash creation. Ice cream machines are just a random example. As you can read in the article they were going for much more, and more significant stuff, but got denied.
Theres quite a lot of humans on this planet. collectively we are capable of performing more than a single task y'know.
I'm not a climate scientist, but i am a programmer. i'd be much more useful on this sort of thing than trying to program my way out of climate change
The right to repair in general is pretty significant.