[US] McDonald’s busted ice cream machines can now be fixed — legally
[US] McDonald’s busted ice cream machines can now be fixed — legally
For the next three years, anyways.
US Copyright Office granted an exemption allowing third parties to diagnose and repair commercial equipment — including the ones that make your McFlurries.
The decision is part of the Copyright Office’s final rule granting exemptions to Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). This exemption-making process happens every three years and is supposed to ensure that the DMCA doesn’t negatively impact people trying to use copyrighted material.
Worth nothing that DMCA exceptions are reviewed on the same 3 year cycle and are frequently revoked. So if you're a McD ice cream fan, enjoy it while you can.
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It won't make any difference as it is unlikely any manager would allow their people to touch machines like this. No sane insurance company would allow other than trained techs to work on such machines.
Managers were already doing it until the company that makes the machine invoked the DMCA to stop them.
A very small number. Most were not. Managers typically don't have the skills (some think they do but don't) - even if they do, running a restaurants needs a lot of effort and spending time fixing a machine is not a good use of your time if you can get someone else to do it (that if is big!)
Managers at McDonald's don't really make a lot of money. Calling out for a tech is much more expensive and likely loses a good amount of revenue for the location.
If you have the skills to repair these machines you are too valuable to be a manager a line manager at McDonalds.
"Repair" is a bit of a stretch. Oftentimes it is pushing a series of buttons and takes less than a minute.
90% of the time the fix was just rebooting the machine. We just got tired of the machine breaking and exploding on us so we'd just stop doing that and say it's broken broken.
What are the actual numbers out of curiosity.
It's not their workers who'll be fixing it, it'll be their regional handyman or a subcontractor like me.
McDonald's in particular has a well-established maintenance infrastructure
Doesn't this open up the number of techs that they can get in which makes them cheaper? Then you are more likely to get a tech who tells you exactly what is being done wrong that causes it to stop working. If I recall correctly, it is often something done incorrectly during the cleaning process.
Maybe, but probably not. These are a niche thing, and so I find it unlikely there will be third party techs who know what they are doing (as opposed to guys with a wrench who can talk good but will leave salmonella behind or something)
Almost certainly. The issue often isn't difficulty to repair but knowing what the error codes mean since they are pretty nonsensical. The company that builds them sued a company that made an add-on that made troubleshooting them significantly easier (the FTC sided with the company making the add-on). McDonald's corporate owns a large chunk of the company that makes the machines and also the company that provides the technicians. The technicians are usually done within a couple minutes because it is usually just a machine reset.
These are really not that niche. Every fast food company has similar devices but does not have machines that often breakdown and require waiting several hours for a technician to show up and fix the problem in a few minutes.