iFixit requests DMCA exemption for McDonald's unreliable ice cream machines

[Shawn Knight]

Chilling: In life, nothing is certain except death, taxes… and the ice cream machine at your local McDonald's being broken. We are joking, of course, but only sort of. At any given time, a suspiciously high number of Mickey D's ice cream machines are out of order.

According to McBroken, a site that monitors the status of McDonald's ice cream machines across the country, a whopping 13.82 percent are broken as of this writing. That seems awfully high for industrial machinery and is clearly unacceptable to the gadget repair specialists at iFixit, so they have made it their mission to get to the bottom of the issue.

As iFixit recounts and as we highlighted last year, Mickey D's ice cream machines are manufactured by a company called Taylor that conveniently password-protects the machines to keep troubleshooters at bay. When something goes wrong (and that seems to happen a lot), the only solution is to call out a Taylor-certified technician to fix it.

According to iFixit, a service call from an authorized tech is billed at $315 per 15 minutes. It is no surprise, then, that a quarter of Taylor's profits come from service tech callouts.

It would be easy enough to create a tool to help read error codes and repair the machines, but alas – doing so would violate copyright law. Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) makes it a crime to bypass software locks on devices, even ice cream machines. It is a holdover from the era of CD piracy, and one that iFixit believes should be updated.

Together with Public Knowledge, the repair specialists have asked the copyright office to make ice cream machines exempt from the DMCA. If the exemption is granted, it would allow technical folks like iFixit to legally dig into the machine's software and reverse engineer the code. A true remedy, however, would also require making it legal to sell repair tools, which iFixit has also requested.

Image credit: Mai Emoto

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https://www.techspot.com/news/99971-ifixit-requests-dmca-exemption-mcdonald-unreliable-ice-cream.html

 

[VitalyT]

This seems very under-researched. Ice-cream machines at McDonald's are the infamous scam by McDonald's, to keep them breaking, so the exclusive repair company can keep overcharging for their repair in perpetuity, with McDonald's being the main benefactor, under the table. It is a scam that's been there for many years now, with at least pending lawsuits, and countless reports of the issue, which you can find on YouTube also.

Here's one of them:

 

[3volv3d]

I heard that someone did have a machine that could fix it, but of course he was told he couldn't it had to be Taylor fixed it only.
I ain't so annoyed that it is only 1 group that can sort it, I am more annoyed its in Summer.
But then I believe McDonalds should be closed. Drive thru queues are damagin when engines are running idle waiting.
And isn't there Beef only 100% Beef because the supplier company is called that. So it is still horse ?
I mean just shut them down already, they make awful food. Salad doesn't belong in a fast food burger.
You open the box to find it looks like they emptied the bin of some old lettuce into your burger.
And the guy who emptied himself into the mayonaise?

 

[RudyBob]

The right to repair should not even be an issue

 

[yRaz]

I heard that someone did have a machine that could fix it, but of course he was told he couldn't it had to be Taylor fixed it only.
I ain't so annoyed that it is only 1 group that can sort it, I am more annoyed its in Summer.
But then I believe McDonalds should be closed. Drive thru queues are damagin when engines are running idle waiting.
And isn't there Beef only 100% Beef because the supplier company is called that. So it is still horse ?
I mean just shut them down already, they make awful food. Salad doesn't belong in a fast food burger.
You open the box to find it looks like they emptied the bin of some old lettuce into your burger.
And the guy who emptied himself into the mayonaise?

I'm all for hating McDonalds but I don't even know where to start with your post. So I'm just going to state this fact, Horse meat is illegal to sell for human consumption in the US.

 

[waclark]

This seems very under-researched. Ice-cream machines at McDonald's are the infamous scam by McDonald's, to keep them breaking, so the exclusive repair company can keep overcharging for their repair in perpetuity, with McDonald's being the main benefactor, under the table. It is a scam that's been there for many years now, with at least pending lawsuits, and countless reports of the issue, which you can find on YouTube also.

Here's one of them:

I can't speak to whatever the issue is at McDonald's, but I know from personal experience that any machine that freezes anything can be problematic. I can't tell you how many times we've had our ice machine serviced for various and sundry reasons. We've replaced the main components, and it still breaks down. There is simply something about refrigeration technology that we cannot seem to make 100% reliable (without it being extremely expensive).

 

[3volv3d]

I'm all for hating McDonalds but I don't even know where to start with your post. So I'm just going to state this fact, Horse meat is illegal to sell for human consumption in the US.

The horse comment in my post, was a meat of randomness, I could have used rat. Arbitrary, chosen at random.
But I see that 100% Beef was a BS myth, so I apologise.
I just don't think having an American Burger chain in the UK is a good thing at all. All foreign chains of any franchise should not have a place on our high streets as we should have no outlets of our crap anywhere else.

 

[TheBigT42]

If you do your research it is proven that McDonalds Corporate make a ton of money off the service calls to fix the Ice Cream machines. Corporate also mandates to the franchises what machine model they can use

 

[Aus spot]

From my extensive research in Australia the ice-cream machines are not the biggest downtime machine. That award belongs to the frozen drinks machine.

Probably made by the same company?

 

[Bluescreendeath]

I'm all for hating McDonalds but I don't even know where to start with your post. So I'm just going to state this fact, Horse meat is illegal to sell for human consumption in the US.

Isn't that because most horses in the USA are racing and/or labor horses that are pumped full of antibiotics, drugs, hormones, etc. - and it is those things that they inject/give to the horses that are not approved for human consumption? Or were there other reasons involved.

Horse meat used to be approved for human consumption and was a popular (and healthier) alternative to beef during WW2.

And you are right that it doesn't make sense to sneak horse meat into food nowadays as beef is cheap and subsidized so horse meat probably costs more than beef.

 

[yRaz]

Isn't that because most horses in the USA are racing and/or labor horses that are pumped full of antibiotics, drugs, hormones, etc. - and it is those things that they inject/give to the horses that are not approved for human consumption? Or were there other reasons involved.

Horse meat used to be approved for human consumption and was a popular (and healthier) alternative to beef during WW2.

And you are right that it doesn't make sense to sneak horse meat into food nowadays as beef is cheap and subsidized so horse meat probably costs more than beef.

American Beef is pumped full of all that stuff anyway. There are tons of foods that are illegal in the US and legal in other countries and tons of US food that's illegal in the rest of the worls

 

[BuckarooBonzaii]

If you do your research it is proven that McDonalds Corporate make a ton of money off the service calls to fix the Ice Cream machines. Corporate also mandates to the franchises what machine model they can use

Not too farfetched. Our department's director was always using a particular company to do our HVAC duct cleaning. Years later we found out he was part owner and was fired immediately by our head office.

 

[Vanderlinde]

I'm all for hating McDonalds but I don't even know where to start with your post. So I'm just going to state this fact, Horse meat is illegal to sell for human consumption in the US.

Not just that. My stomach gets upset after eating mcdonalds food. And ive tried a variety of burgers and all that. If I eat a burger at a respected place none of those issues I seem to have, and I feel alot better after consuming it.

Mcdonalds was fun when it was introduced in the 80's, 90's, and never such restaurant with childrens playground would open up like that. But it's here now and even in times of covid it's banking in more then ever.

Hungry? Grab a burger. Everything is designed around upselling. The menu (basic) with "Large" for another dollar, oh you want mayo too? That's 75 cents extra. You are paying for a paper bag too now these days.

When I was 16 I used to work at Mcdonalds in Amsterdam. Every product is pre-made, often frozen and unpacked for the day. You don't really know what's really inside the products. Often things are microwaved - to have the cheese melt. And the coke or fanta your buying is just a postmix of ingredients with a coke taste mixed with water and topped with icecubes. Lotssss of sugar.

If people would just go back 2 back, and start to eat healthy, like for example buy your meat at a butcher instead of the supermarket. Have you ever noticed why the chicken from the supermarket shrinks in size aft

er preparing it? It's because water is injected. Sell less for more.

All these businesses who impose such stupid practices should be banned. It's all about profit.

 

[trieste1s]

Not too farfetched. Our department's director was always using a particular company to do our HVAC duct cleaning. Years later we found out he was part owner and was fired immediately by our head office.

There are many, many, MANY out there who sneer at the very real and pressing concept of Conflict of Interest. Many see absolutely no conflict when it comes to giving good money or positions to family members and relatives.

The proper way is to not even create one.
But if there is a sort of cost-savings or rebates, perhaps openly declare the conflict of interest first, and other company stakeholders can decide whether they see some sort of beneficial arrangement for the company.

 

[fireworksordie]

Wired did an incredible article about the ice cream machines a few years ago:
https://www.wired.com/story/they-hacked-mcdonalds-ice-cream-makers-started-cold-war/

 

[OutsiderX]

I am a Manager at mcds for over 10 yrs and I have a few reasons why the machine might not be working.

1) its really busy and the machine might be out of vanilla mix and the staff couldn't be bothered or too lazy to fill it with vanilla mix, and so decide not to serve ice cream. I've seen this happen and have heard about it on shifts I'm not working.

2) it happens, but sometimes the restaurant runs out of vanilla mix especially on really hot days or during a heat wave, or they just didn't order enough

3) it's actually broken; the machines need to be cleaned weekly or biweekly depending on the store, and the manager who cleaned it didn't do it properly, prompting a service call to Taylor to get a technician to come take a look at it.

4) On overnights, and at my store the machine goes into heat lock mode at 3:30am until approximately 8am so during that time you're not able to draw ice cream unless you want the station to explode with vanilla mix everywhere. This is a self cleaning mode and you cannot do anything about it.