Other opinions: McDonald’s inconsistent McFlurry machines are now easier to fix. It’s more important than you think | Opinion

With the E. coli scare tied to some quarter pounders, most likely the sliced ​​onions that followed, McDonald’s and its franchisees have fallen on hard times lately, as reflected in its stock price fluctuations. But this week brought good news for the Chicago-based fast food giant.

The notoriously fickle McFlurry stations, also known as soft serve ice cream machines, can now be legally repaired by franchisees’ own skilled employees. They will no longer have to wait for someone from the manufacturer, Taylor Co., to come and decipher the strange error codes on the machine.

And what creature made this possible? Believe it or not, the US Copyright Office has essentially announced that it has approved allowing food preparation machines at the retail level to bypass digital locks without infringing copyrights, a new category of exceptions that includes McFlurry devices.

Donald Trump, a fan of the chain, has already stated on X that if elected, he will make sure the machines are in working order, presumably making McFlurry great again. But the nonpartisan U.S. Copyright Office actually beat Trump to the punch.

Why does this matter? And it’s not just that McDonald’s played a surprisingly large role in the presidential election, especially when it comes to social media and employment reports. This is related to the consumer right to repair, a concept we’ve written about before that is designed to restrict manufacturers from copyrighting the very processes that get their machines back into working order, giving them an effective monopoly on repairs. .

The Copyright Office’s ruling was narrow (joint petitioners Public Knowledge and iFixit were hoping for a much broader exemption for industrial equipment), but you can see the importance of this for everyone from independent auto repair shops to appliance repair shops, some of which are already benefiting . from state laws. Obviously, this has implications for business, but also for the environment: if something can’t be easily repaired, it’s more likely to end up in landfill.

In the case of frozen treats at McDonald’s, the machines regularly generated digital error codes, something that is now familiar to most things we buy. But if you’re not from Taylor, it’s hard to understand what they mean. And McDonald’s franchisees complained that Taylor’s repair technicians didn’t show up right away.

Some McDonald’s franchisees have taken matters into their own hands, sparking a slew of lawsuits, most notably against the third-party company Kytch, which grew up specifically to help franchisees solve the problem that was forcing them to stop selling ice cream. Adding to the complexity were contracts between hardware maker Taylor and McDonald’s corporate offices, leading some franchisees to suspect the company has competing agendas when it comes to keeping old software servers running.

So this is a win for many of McDonald’s small franchisees, as well as some of the larger ones. More broadly, we’re all for loosening these kinds of regulations, in this case helping businesses better serve their customers and consumers enjoy an expertly crafted frozen dessert.