iFixit to the rescue: McDonald's workers can rescue their own ice cream machines

Burger me! Partial success in chipping away at insane DMCA rules

The US Copyright Office has published a new list of exemptions from the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), including one for retail food machines that was requested to deal with the perennial problem of broken ice cream makers at McDonald's.

Under the terms of the DMCA, manufacturers can block attempts to investigate and tinker with hardware and software that the maker has deemed a trade secret. In the case of McDonald's, this has meant that their ice cream machine supplier, Taylor, could insist that only its technicians could fix the hardware, and they often took their time doing so. The practice has, however, been tremendously profitable for Taylor, which has software locks in place to stop anyone other than its own staff from fixing any errors that crop up.

This has been incredibly frustrating for customers who want their McFlurries, but also for franchisees who want to sell them one - according to the McBroken website set up to track this issue, around 14 percent of ice cream makers in the US are broken at present. It's become such a contentious issue that the FTC is reportedly investigating, and presidential hopeful Donald Trump has made it part of his platform.

"WHEN I’M PRESIDENT THE MCDONALD’S ICE CREAM MACHINES WILL WORK GREAT AGAIN!," he said on X this weekend.

Last year repair biz iFixit tore down one of these ice cream makers and found them rather easy to fix. Indeed, a startup called Kytch started selling a device that could be attached to an ice cream maker and report faults directly to the owner. McDonalds apparently warned franchisees that the device could cause “serious human injury,” and there's now a lawsuit over the matter.

So iFixit and non-profit Public Knowledge filed a request to the Copyright Office seeking a DMCA exemption specific to this case.

"Commercial ice cream machines, such as the Taylor manufactured ice cream machines used by McDonald’s, frequently fall into disrepair when its daily pasteurization cycle fails," they said [PDF]. "Circumventing the digital lock on the software would enable owners and repair professionals to diagnose and perform the necessary repairs to get these devices back up and running."

The Copyright Office sided with them and, in a post on Friday, said that such machines were now fair game for those who wanted to get some repairs done without voiding their warranty.

"The Register recommends adopting a new exemption covering diagnosis, maintenance, and repair of retail-level commercial food preparation equipment because proponents sufficiently showed, by a preponderance of the evidence, adverse effects on the proposed noninfringing uses of such equipment," the Register of Copyrights ruled.

"However, she declines to recommend an exemption for a broader class of software-enabled commercial and industrial devices in the absence of a sufficient showing of adverse effects on the record."

But, it's very much a partial victory, as iFixit's director of sustainability Elizabeth Chamberlain explained.

While it's now legal to circumvent the digital locks on these machines, the ruling does not allow us to share or distribute the tools necessary to do so

"While it’s now legal to circumvent the digital locks on these machines, the ruling does not allow us to share or distribute the tools necessary to do so. This is a major limitation. Most franchise owners and independent repair shops won’t have the technical expertise to create their own unlocking tools from scratch, meaning that while the door to repair has been opened, few will be able to walk through it without significant difficulty," she said.

"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."

In other words, fans of mediocre ice cream won't be getting relief on the issue any time soon. Maybe Trump can sort it out if he wins.

Taylor had no comment at the time of publication. ®