McFixed: Copyright Office Says Owners Can Fix Their McFlurry Machines
McFixed: Copyright Office Says Owners Can Fix Their McFlurry Machines
The Copyright Office's DMCA exemption for repairing McDonald's McFlurry machines, made by Taylor, is good news. The reality may disappoint. Also: the FTC investigates Deere over repair restrictions.
Chalk it up as another victory for the right to repair - though a small one: The U.S. Copyright Office last week granted an exception to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) allowing owners of McDonald’s notoriously flaky McFlurry ice cream machines to bypass digital locks in order to service and repair the devices.
Contents:
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Apple's iOS 18 adds repair assistant, but doesn't ditch repair obstacles
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In the EU: push for repairability is remaking sporting goods
YouTuber creates upgradeable SSD storage for Apple silicon MacBooksThe decision, published on Friday, grants a DMCA exemption covering “Computer programs that are contained in and control the functioning of lawfully acquired equipment … for use in retail-level commercial food preparation when circumvention is a necessary step to allow the diagnosis, maintenance, or repair of such a device,” according to a copy of the federal notice. The decision follows a petition filed by the group Public Knowledge and iFixit in 2023 seeking an expanded repair exemption for commercial and industrial equipment that cited the McFlurry machines as an example of how manufacturers were abusing copyright protections to create expensive and abusive monopolies around repair and maintenance.
A Fix For McBroken?
The DMCA exemption brings a measure of justice for owners of a device that has been the poster child for the right to repair movement for years: highlighting the many ways that manufacturers of industrial machinery use suspect business practices to create de-facto monopolies on repair and service that drain their customers’ pockets and dramatically raise the costs of doing business. McFlurry owners now have the right to circumvent software locks in order to diagnose problems with- and repair their machines.
At the center of the McFlurry story was Taylor Company, the nearly century old, Rockton, Illinois based firm that makes and sells the model C602 (aka “McFlurry”) machines to tens of thousands McDonald’s franchisees globally. In 2018, entrepreneur Jeremy O’Sullivan co-founded the start-up Kytch with his wife Melissa Nelson to provide a simple plug-in device that offered McDonald’s franchisees the ability to circumvent software barriers Taylor erected to accessing critical administrative and diagnostic features for the machine.
Kytch’s business flourished as McDonald’s franchisees embraced the cost saving tool - until McDonald’s declared the Kytch device “unsafe” and warned McDonald’s store owners that using it risked their franchise. That decision spelled the end for Kytch’s business and became the subject of a $900 million civil suit and the subject of a headline grabbing piece by Wired’s Andy Greenberg in 2021 that highlighted Kytch’s David vs. Goliath(s) story.
The case provided some needed context around a well-identified problem (broken McFlurry machines). A trove of some 800 pages of internal communications revealed how Taylor executives were acutely aware of Kytch and sought to copy the company’s technology. The story of Kytch’s rise and fall against the backdrop of widespread McFlurry outages also shone a light on how maximalist copyright protections were costing both consumers and businesses. The McFlurry case was even raised at a Congressional hearing on the right to repair in July, 2023. (*cough* I testified *cough*)
A win for the kitchen
With the exemption from the Copyright Office, “owners, repair technicians, and tinkerers can now legally bypass the software locks on retail-level commercial food preparation equipment, such as the Taylor ice cream machines,” wrote Elizabeth Chamberlain at iFixit. McDonald’s franchisees and other McFlurry owners - in theory - will not be required to make costly service calls to Taylor-authorized repair shops to do maintenance and repair of their equipment.
And the Copyright Office exemption extends to other commercial kitchen equipment including potentially commercial espresso machines, as well as ovens and other equipment, Chamberlain wrote.
Mind the small print
Unfortunately, the Copyright Office’s decision won’t make the job of repairing McFlurry machines much easier for McDonald’s franchisees and other Taylor customers. That’s because, while the Digital Millennium Copyright Act’s Section 1201, allows for exemptions to the prohibition on disabling software locks designed to protect copyrighted material, it makes it illegal to distribute tools or information about doing so to others. In other words, each individual McFlurry owner will now have to figure out how to accomplish that complex task themselves, without the assistance of firms like Kytch or iFixit.
That’s a big limitation, wrote Chamberlain of iFixit.
“This is a major limitation. Most franchise owners and independent repair shops won’t have the technical expertise to create their own unlocking tools from scratch, meaning that while the door to repair has been opened, few will be able to walk through it without significant difficulty. (It) leaves most of the repair work inaccessible to the average person, since the technical barriers remain high.”
Additionally, the Copyright Office declined to embrace iFixit and Public Knowledge’s call for a broad exemption for commercial devices of all kind, limiting its ruling to equipment used for food production and citing the Kytch case as “overwhelming evidence” of abusive practices. That’s good news for kitchens, restaurants and others in the food industry, but bad news for business owners in the rest of our $29 trillion economy.
The bigger fix for the problem, of course, is not more a reform of the decades old DMCA that allows for broad “fair use” exemptions to Section 1201 for the purposes of repair and maintenance. The Librarian of Congress recognized that need in its ruling, calling out the inefficiency and inadequacy of the current exemption process, given the scope of challenges posed by locked down, embedded software.
“The Librarian is further aware of the policy and legal issues involving a generalized ‘right to repair’ equipment with embedded software,” it reads. “Copyright is but one piece in a national framework for ensuring the security, trustworthiness, and reliability of embedded software, and other copyright-protected technology that affects our daily lives. Issues such as these extend beyond the reach of 1201 and may require a broader solution…The Librarian fully supports the Register in her examination of these issues and urges Congress to work with the Copyright Office and other federal agencies to consider these issues beyond the contours of this 1201 rule making.”
Let’s hope someone in Congress is reading that! In the meantime, check out other great coverage of this news from Public Knowledge, 404 Media and Hackaday.
😠 Got a repair complaint? Tell us about it!
Do you have a complaint about a manufacturer who is blocking your effort to repair your product? The Repair Coalition wants to hear about it! Use the link below to talk about the repair obstacles you’ve encountered.
Other News
Federal Trade Commission Investigates John Deere Over Repair Restrictions
The US Federal Trade Commission is investigating tractor giant Deere & Co. over whether its agricultural equipment repair practices violate antitrust or consumer protection laws, Reuters reports.
The existence of the FTC’s investigation into Deere was made public Thursday in a filing by a data processing company that is a third party in the case.
The FTC sent an information request in August to the third party saying it was investigating whether Deere engaged in “unfair, deceptive, anticompetitive, collusive, coercive, predatory, exploitative or exclusionary acts or practices” that related to “the repair of agricultural equipment.”
Hargrove & Associates Inc. processes data on behalf of the Association of Equipment Manufacturers, a trade association for construction and agriculture equipment manufacturers. The FTC sought information from Hargrove in August as part of the probe, and the company filed a petition seeking to limit the data it must provide the agency. Neither Hargrove nor AEM are targets in the probe, the company said in its filing.
International repair day: a right to repair is spreading across the globe
October 19th marked the latest International Repair Day: a celebration of those who help repair products, reducing waste and environmental impact, and supporting the transition to a circular economy. The last year has seen a number of victories in the global fight for a right to repair, with new laws in the US, EU, and limited legislation in the UK to support consumer repairs. iFixit notes that the past year saw over 20,000 repair events in 31 countries over 15 years, with 208,491 successful repairs. Right to repair laws were also proposed on every continent except Antarctica. (Repair.org has launched a page to track advocacy globally.) Right to repair runs counter to the push by manufacturers for constant upgrades and replacements, fueling waste and overconsumption with significant environmental consequences. Companies increasingly design products with short lifespans or make repairs difficult, forcing replacements and contributing to growing e-waste. Advocates for consumers' ability to repair their devices, extending product life, reducing waste, and challenging the throwaway culture.
Apple’s iOS 18 adds repair assistant…and lots of hurdles
The release this week of Apple’s iOS 18 update comes with features that are being celebrated as “pro repair.” That includes a Repair Assistant for some devices (specifically: iPhone 15+, iPad Pro M4, and iPad Air M2) that is intended to simplify the process of approving the replacement and calibration of parts without needing direct support from Apple - a previous impediment to repairs. The update also includes better battery life monitoring for third-party batteries - one of the most common types of iPhone repair. But an article over at Hackaday points out that - while the addition of Repair Assistant marks an improvement - Apple’s device maintenance ecosystem is still chocked full of impediments to repairs. Among them: activation-locked parts that are ineligible for Repair Assistant, a lack of support for third party (non-Apple manufactured) replacement parts, and calibration failures, reboots, and other issues with the Repair Assistant. The take away: Apple’s embrace of the right to repair is a reluctant one.
Senators urge HHS to protect wheelchair users from private equity
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