The soft serve machines at McDonald’s restaurants are
so often out of order that their reliable unreliability has long been the butt of jokes, memes — and now even a rallying cry in this year’s presidential election.

The widespread question has even spurred the creation of McBroken, a
tracker online for broken machines across the US

A new exemption from copyright law could pave the way for faster repairs to the machines, brightening the McFlurry maker’s sour reputation.

Before this week, most 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, such as McDonald’s employees and franchisees, to break the digital locks installed by the manufacturers.

The new rulethat went into effect Monday, allows outside vendors to fix “commercial food preparation equipment at the retail level.” That includes McDonald’s ice cream machines, as 404 media journalist
Jason Koebler explained to NPR Weekend Edition.

That’s a win for the “right to repair” movement, which is pushing back against companies that have incentives to control repairs made to their own products. The
movement advocate for legislation that makes manufacturers give consumers and independent repair services access to their parts, tools and service information so that consumers can get their own legally purchased devices fixed. The movement prevailed when Apple announced in 2021 that it would allow customers to
repair their iPhones themselves.

While the change applies to other devices and machines, McDonald’s and its ice cream machines have become particularly galvanizing subjects, especially in the run-up to the presidential election.

Two days before the law went into effect, former President Donald Trump wrote a post
photograph at X of him at a McDonald’s drive-thru, with a photoshopped President Biden holding an ice cream cone, along with a promise: “WHEN I’M PRESIDENT, MCDONALD’S GAS GAS MACHINES WILL WORK AWESOME AGAIN!”

It’s possible the Biden administration beat him to it. Federal regulators supported the right of repair advocates who sought exemptions for food preparation machines. Back in March, the Federal Trade Commission and the Department of Justice
both provided comments to the US Copyright Office recommending the change.

Both iFixit, an online repair site, and Public Knowledge, a consumer nonprofit, requested the exemption.

“This is an important step forward”
wrote iFixit in a blog post celebrated the move, but said the rule doesn’t go far. While the ruling makes it legal for people to repair machines, the Guide’s Elizabeth Chamberlain wrote, “it does not allow us to share or distribute the tools needed to do so.”

Copyright 2024 NPR