A how-to repair company wants to fix one of summer’s biggest problems: McDonald’s broken ice cream machines

• McDonald’s ice cream machines are so prone to breakdowns that they’ve spawned thousands of memes.
• Now, iFixit, a how-to repair company, wants a copyright exemption to repair them.
• Copyright law is getting in the way because it currently prevents users from bypassing software locks.

The ice cream machines at fast food giant McDonald’s are so prone to breakdowns that they’ve spawned thousands of memes.

And now, one repair company wants a copyright exemption to fix them.

In a video published Tuesday, iFixit — a company famous for consumer electronic teardowns and repair guides — took apart a McDonald’s ice cream machine to find out why it breaks so often.

In the video, iFixit said the machine’s overly complex error codes — coupled with a service contract between McDonald’s and machine maker Taylor that gives the latter the exclusive right to do repairs — create a time-consuming and expensive dependency on Taylor’s service technicians.

This makes it a right-to-repair issue, said iFixit. The company is now working together with nonprofit Public Knowledge to petition the US Copyright Office for an exemption from the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, or DMCA, to allow them to repair McDonald’s ice cream machines, it said in a statement published Tuesday.

That’s because the DMCA prohibits users from bypassing a device’s software locks — even if it is to repair the device.

“We’ve submitted exemption requests like this for tractors and for Xboxes and for smartphones, and we’ve won every time we’ve tried to get an exemption,” Elizabeth Chamberlain, iFixit’s director of sustainability, said in Tuesday’s video.

Still, an exemption wouldn’t allow iFixit to distribute a device that lets franchise owners troubleshoot their own ice cream machines because of copyright protections, said Chamberlain.

The company says there’s a need for broader reforms of copyright law to ensure users can legally bypass software locks to repair their own devices. Hence, it is also calling for lawmakers to reintroduce the Freedom to Repair Act.

McDonald’s ice cream machines have a history of breaking down. So much so that in 2020, one software developer created a website to tell you if your nearby McDonald’s has a working ice cream machine. McBroken says over 11% of these machines are currently broken in the US at the time of writing.

This isn’t the first time an outside group has tried to fix McDonald’s ice cream machines. Startup Kytch introduced a device in 2019 to help franchise owners troubleshoot their ice cream machines so they could repair them. But that device is now mired in a lawsuit.

McDonald’s, Taylor, and iFixit did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Insider sent outside regular business hours.