McDonald’s ice cream machines have garnered an infamous — and comical — reputation for always being broken. So much so that soon-to-be-president Donald Trump made a campaign promise to repair the machines once in office. “WHEN I’M PRESIDENT THE MCDONALD’S ICE CREAM MACHINES WILL WORK GREAT AGAIN!” he wrote on his social media platform.
Unfortunately for Trump, he was too slow to make that a reality because Lina Khan, Chair of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), had already beaten him to it, per a report from Mother Jones. On Oct. 25, the day before Trump’s pledge, the United States Copyright Office announced a new copyright exemption allowing some small business owners and franchisees to repair “retail-level commercial food preparation equipment.” It targeted the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which protects the functional software within the ice cream machines. The law itself made it illegal for third parties (like McDonald’s employees and franchisee owners) to break the machines’ digital locks and conduct any repairs. Only the machine’s manufacturer could fix them.
