The FTC and DOJ ask the Copyright Office for the right to fix McDonald's ice cream machines

[thewayne]

Yes, it's a little more complicated than that.

Every three years the Copyright Office can be petitioned for exemptions to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) to allow people to fix things that they own that are locked behind flimsy digital shields to ensure the maker gets a tithe whenever things need repair. The current round has the DOJ and FTC asking for four exemptions, for: "commercial soft serve machines; proprietary diagnostic kits; programmable logic controllers; and enterprise IT."

The reason for the McDonald's ice cream machines is pretty simple. Corporate requires that franchisees buy one specific brand of machine. Not only is it prone to breaking down, the company that makes them and services them is notorious for taking its time to fix them - sometimes up to NINETY DAYS according to letters of complaint! THAT is a lot of lost revenue for a franchise! It's so bad that there is a web site that you can check to see if the ice cream machine at your local McD's is working or not.

The problem is that the maker has put the diagnostic codes behind a ridiculous digital encryption system and locked them in a DMCA claim. If you break them, you risk being sued. Which, of course, they have been hacked and decoded. A company made a decoder and is involved in a legal battle with the maker. A DMCA waiver exempting the machines would nullify the battle, make the decoder legal, and mean that any decent commercial/industrial appliance repairman with the decoder could repair the machines, greatly reducing downtime.

Is the machine special? Not particularly. The only thing unique about it is that it has a pasteurization system so that the franchises can use non-pasteurized milk. Me, personally, I'd much rather pasteurization take place at the dairy, not at a local McDonald's. But that's just me. I can just picture a teenager accidentally dropping a big carton of milk, it splitting open, and now you have unpasteurized milk all over the place.

https://www.theverge.com/2024/3/14/24101023/ftc-doj-comment-dmca-ifixit-ice-cream-machines

Comments

[kaishin108]

I agree, machine that are prone to breaking doing the pasteurization, that is quite odd for a large chain. They sure have their issues.

[garote]

Better, I suppose, than a teenager spacing out and pouring 30-day-old milk into a machine that then doesn't re-sterilize it. ;)

[thewayne]

I don't know that milk spectacularly past its date, going through pasteurization, would magically be safe.  I certainly wouldn't want it! :)

[rain_gryphon]

Heya. Completely off-topic here, but do you or your wife know of any good android app that tells sidereal time?

[thewayne]

She's also an iPhone user, she asked the person on-shift who is a Droid user.  However, she said she doesn't have a recommendation off the top of her head.  Probably your best bet would be to download astronomy apps and check 'em out and find one that way.

[rain_gryphon]

Okay. Thanks!

[disneydream06]

Granted I don't eat at McD's and I haven't been to a fast food restaurant in awhile, but this explains why I don't. Especially the ice cream. :o :o :o
Hugs, Jon

[silveradept]

I'd prefer it if the DMCA exemption were essentially "if you're using DRM as a way of preventing competition and establishing yourself as a monopoly, you can't sue anyone using the DMCA." Knock out the ice cream makers and also make HP stop using DRM to prevent others from putting ink in their printers.

[thewayne]

In an ideal world, my friend.  But here, We The People are merely resources from which wealth is to be extracted from corporate interests.