McDonald’s can now repair its broken ice cream machines

iStockphoto

Thanks to a new exception to a copyright law, McDonald’s restaurants can now FINALLY solve their problems broken ice machines.

This is huge news, because as anyone who has ever tried to order a cone or a McFlurry knows well: McDonald’s ice machines are seemingly always broken. (Even Wendy knowsand uses it to their advantage.)

Ever since apps became a thing, there have been people locating broken McDonald’s ice cream machines in an attempt to help people find one that actually works in their area.

Explanations for Why McDonald’s ice cream machines are always broken and have come from countless people over the years, also from McDonald’s itself.

It got so bad that some McDonald’s got franchises established a task force to repair ice machines and even the federal government has gotten involved.

However, now there is light at the end of the tasty ice cream tunnel.

According to Emma Bowman from NPR, “A new exception to copyright law could pave the way for faster repairs to the machines.”

Before this week, most McDonald’s ice cream machines could only be repaired through the machine’s manufacturer. The Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which protects the code embedded in the ice cream machines, made it illegal for third parties, such as McDonald’s employees and franchisees, to break the digital locks installed by manufacturers.

The new rule, which went into effect Monday, allows third-party vendors to repair “retail-level commercial food preparation equipment.” That includes McDonald’s ice cream machines, such as 404 media journalist Jason Koebler explained NPR’s weekend edition.

This new exemption, issued by the Library of Congress Copyright Office, now allows people to hack or bypass the kinds of arbitrary software locks that manufacturers place on commercial food equipment to prevent repairs, and that includes McFlurry machines, Koebler said.

So we can thank the Federal Trade Commission and the Department of Justice, both of those petition filed for this exemption for food preparation machines to take place in March.

Now, if your local McDonald’s tells you that their ice cream machine is “broken,” it most likely means that the employees just… too busy or lazy to clean it.