iFixit tears down a McDonald’s ice cream machine, demands DMCA exemption for it
iFixit tears down a McDonald’s ice cream machine, demands DMCA exemption for it
Public Knowledge and iFixit want the right to repair commercial kitchen gear.
McDonald’s soft-serve ice cream machines are regularly broken, and it’s not just your perception. When repair vendor and advocate iFixit was filming a video about the topic, it checked tracking map McBroken and found that 34 percent of the machines in the state of New York were reported inoperable. As I write this, the nationwide number of broken machines is just above 14 percent.
To improve the nation’s semi-frozen milk fat infrastructure, iFixit has done two things. One, as first reported by 404 Media, is to join with interest group Public Knowledge to petition the Copyright Office for an exemption allowing people to fix commercial equipment, such as McDonald’s ice cream machines and other industrial kitchen equipment, without fear of reprisal under Section 1201 of the DMCA.
This dude on Youtube did an in-depth examination of the weird corporate reasons why the ice cream machines can't be maintained properly. Sorry for the Youtube link, but I honestly couldn't find a text story that went into the same type of analysis about it.
Edit: Timestamped the link to skip some folderol at the beginning
Also, from someone who used to work at mcdonalds when I was in college - it's not the fault of the employees that the shake machine is broken and getting pissy at someone earning minimum wage because you can't have your mcflurry is peak entitlement and assholeism.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/watch?v=SrDEtSlqJC4
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source, check me out at GitHub.
He could've said all this in about 5 minutes.
That video is great.
No it's not.
It over-dramatizes something that isn't worth getting fed up about.
There's a comment at the end of the article explaining that the McDonald's machines are somewhat unique in having a nightly pasteurization process that allows them to go two weeks between cleanings instead of requiring nightly cleaning like other machines.
Listeria is a risk if ice cream machines are not properly maintained. Recent case linked to ice cream machines: https://www.cnn.com/2023/08/20/us/tacoma-milkshake-listeria-deaths/index.html
Not that there are not clearly other issues at play. Just a couple important pieces of what's going on that were not covered in the article itself.
And to be clear, they're mostly down because the nightly boil of the ice cream mixture wasn't completed due to overfilling the machine making it unable to reach the temp. The service company refuses to let the workers know that and the machine doesn't volunteer that information.
This ice cream machine saga is so bizarre...
It really isn't once you understand the basics.
- Some company got a contract with McDonald's to do all their ice cream machines, probably through a personal connection. This contract included expensive maintenance.
- The company made a shit product, probably to save costs. It both doesn't work well and is a pain to service.
- McDonald's has decided that the lost revenue is not as big of a deal as getting out of that shitty contract with a shitty company that made a shitty product.
That is all there is to it.
It's because McDonalds makes money by selling the machines to their franchisees.
It’s not much different than coke/Pepsi fountains….
Given how filthy those things get, I'm surprised people don't get sick from them too.
Yah, everyone just needs to cool down.
It's a request, not a demand
This is the best summary I could come up with:
When repair vendor and advocate iFixit was filming a video about the topic, it checked tracking map McBroken and found that 34 percent of the machines in the state of New York were reported inoperable.
One tiny company had previously attempted to address the glut of broken, indecipherable Taylor machines and was duly ostracized for its efforts.
Taylor, which reportedly has an exclusive contract with McDonald’s for maintenance of its machines, moved quickly to make the use of a Kytch a contract-voiding, franchise-ending issue.
The saga, as reported by Wired, has taken a few intriguing turns, including Taylor’s creation of a competing product, revealing discovery emails, and a $900 million Kytch lawsuit.
Public Knowledge and iFixit have submitted a petition to the Copyright Office to argue that bypassing the digital security measures on commercial equipment such as Taylor’s machines should not be illegal.
“The fact that this principle is not already embedded permanently into law demonstrates that our copyright system is as McBroken as the average McDonald’s ice cream machine.” (Link added by Public Knowledge.)
The original article contains 716 words, the summary contains 175 words. Saved 76%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
This must be US-only, I've never seen an ice cream machine out of service at McD's in Europe.
The service contract company is absolutely a US syndicate that's harder to export. Only the British empire was able to effectively export it's graft wholesale I think.
It’s so common here that it exists as it’s own website:
Not in the USA, but my password is my unique key that in cryptic my data, so therefore an FBI or any other agency is not allowed to pass it even if they could, no? As I’m the person who rode this password and therefore am the copyright holder of that password.
Not sure I understand your point.
What are you talking about?
As longe as you don’t do crimes …
Is the police allowed to enter your house when needed by law?
Besides this, you are probably replying the wrong post.
You might be thinking of the password vs fingerprint phone unlock. Courts decided that while your fingerprint could be compelled, you couldn't be compelled to reveal your password as that was private knowledge. That isn't due to copyright though, it's a 5th Amendment issue here in the US (The Fifth Amendment grants anyone in the U.S. the right to remain silent, which includes the right to not turn over information that could incriminate them in a crime. These days, those protections extend to the passcodes that only a device owner knows).
We've written plenty of legal justification around it, but ultimately it just comes down to the fact that police CAN physically place your finger into your phone, but cannot extract a password from your brain that you don't want to give up.
If we had the ability to read minds, there'd be legal justification to grab your password within a year.