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FTC and DOJ Think McDonald's Ice Cream Machines Should Be Legal To Fix

The Federal Trade Commission and the Department of Justice have urged the US Copyright Office to broaden exemptions to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act's Section 1201. Specifically, the two agencies are advocating for the extension of the right to repair to include "commercial and industrial equ...

Prior exemptions have been issued for jailbreaking cellphones and repairing certain parts of video game consoles. The comment(PDF) singles out four distinct categories that would benefit from DMCA exemptions: commercial soft serve machines; proprietary diagnostic kits; programmable logic controllers; and enterprise IT. The average estimated cost of "unplanned manufacturing downtime" was $260,000 per hour, the comment notes, citing research from Public Knowledge and iFixit.

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