A group of right to repair activists and consumer rights advocates are petitioning the Librarian of Congress for the right to hack McDonald’s notoriously unreliable McFlurry machines for the purposes of repair, according to a copy of the petition obtained by 404 Media.
“This is a request to expand the repair exemption for consumer electronic devices to include commercial industrial equipment such as automated building management systems and industrial equipment (i.e. soft serve ice cream machines and other industrial kitchen equipment),” the proposal, written by right to repair group iFixit and the nonprofit Public Knowledge, says.
In addition, iFixit got its hands on a Taylor ice cream machine and tore it down in an effort to determine why they are broken so damn often and published a new video showing the process of taking the machine apart and explaining why they’re always broken when you want fast food ice cream.
The petition and teardown video come as a lawsuit between Taylor and a company that made a device that reads and deciphers the machine’s error codes enters its third year and heads toward a jury trial later this fall.
Every three years, interested parties have to file requests with the Librarian of Congress that seek “exemptions” to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, the overarching federal copyright law. Through a process called Section 1201 rulemaking, repair professionals and consumer rights groups seek permission from the government to break arbitrary software locks and passwords that keep consumers and repair professionals from diagnosing and repairing equipment they own or are authorized by the owner to work on.

Currently, Taylor has servi