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Thanks to a new exemption to a copyright law, McDonald’s restaurants can now, FINALLY, fix their broken ice cream machines.
This is massive news, because as anyone who has ever tried to order a cone or a McFlurry is well aware, McDonald’s ice cream machines are seemingly always broken. (Even Wendy’s knows, and uses it to their advantage.)
Ever since apps became a thing, there have been people tracking broken McDonald’s ice cream machines in an effort to help people find one that is actually working in their area.
Explanations for why McDonald’s ice cream makers are always broken have come from numerous people over the years, including from McDonald’s themselves.
Things got so bad that some McDonald’s franchises created a task force to fix ice cream machines and even the federal government has gotten involved.
Now, however, there is light at the end of the tasty ice cream tunnel.
According to Emma Bowman of NPR, “A new exemption to a copyright law could pave the way for quicker repairs to the machines.”
Before this week, most of the McDonald’s ice cream makers could only be fixed 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, like McDonald’s employees and franchisee owners, to break the digital locks installed by manufacturers.
The new rule, which went into effect on Monday, allows outside vendors to fix “retail-level commercial food preparation equipment.” That includes McDonald’s ice cream machines, as 404 media journalist Jason Koebler explained to NPR’s Weekend Edition.
This new exemption, handed down by the Library of Congress Copyright Office, now “allows people to hack or circumvent the kind of arbitrary software locks that manufacturers put on commercial food equipment to prevent repair, and that covers McFlurry machines,” according to Koebler.
So, we can thank the Federal Trade Commission and the Justice Department, who each petitioned for this exemption for food prep machines to take place back in March.
Now, if your local McDonald’s tells you their ice cream machine is “broken,” it more than likely just means the employees were just too busy, or too lazy, to clean it.