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McDonald’s busted ice cream machines can now be fixed — legally

For the next three years, anyways.

According to the Copyright Office, the exemption will allow people to diagnose, perform maintenance, and repair “retail-level commercial food preparation equipment.” After performing a teardown of the machine last year, iFixit teamed up with Public Knowledge to file for an exemption, which the Federal Trade Commission and Department of Justice supported. “There’s nothing vanilla about this victory; an exemption for retail-level commercial food preparation equipment will spark a flurry of third-party repair activity and enable businesses to better serve their customer,” Meredith Rose, Public Knowledge’s senior policy counsel, said in a press release.

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