15
votes
Copyright Office exemption makes McDonald’s ice cream machines repairable
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- Title
- McDonald's busted ice cream machines can now be fixed - legally
- Authors
- Emma Roth
- Published
- Oct 25 2024
- Word count
- 301 words
But of course. A full exemption would mean 3rd parties could create their own smart integrations that work better and cheaper than the first-party ones across the entirety of industry. And god forbid that this extends to residential uses.
I want to be able to replace my car's touchscreen with a third-party headstock that has proper buttons like the good old days.
Isn't right to repair a thing for personal use stuff?
Though what you're talking about is modifying - and it sounds like significant stuff, not just adding some paint or whatnot, so I'm sure there's other laws there... if you were trying to sell it, or I guess insurance issues, since it's a car?
It's strange, isn't it? You can take out your original brake calipers from your car and install completely new aftermarket thing (basically modifying the car) and it's ok. It almost sounds like a wild dream when you consider what other stuff you actually can't do! Like this change of the touchscreen for buttons.
This is the perfect way to understand how our IP laws are out of control. Proprietary software and trade secrets are basically equivalent to saying that not only can we not replace the brake calipers, you're not allowed to know what they look like, where they are, or even if they actually exist.
I can soooorta see touchscreen for buttons having a mild argument of "well you literally cannot have enough buttons to cover the full functionality of the touchscreen, and we put all the controls for x/y/z behind it", but that's already stretching.
The fact touchscreens were approved at all already shows a large amount of stupidity in my eyes.
I had a touchscreen android auto headstock that also was fully controlable by buttons.
Turns out 'up down left right' and an 'ok' butyon go a long way. Or a knob for quicks scrolling.
That is what the lawsuit was about, some company creating a bolt-on diagnostic system. It would be little different from having someone reverse-engineer the proprietary diagnostic module that is built into my HVAC that can only be read by a technician.