A new federal rule makes it legal to bypass software locks on commercial food equipment for the purposes of repair.

It is now legal to hack or otherwise bypass technical protection measures on McFlurry machines and other commercial food preparation machines in order to repair them thanks to a new rule issued by the Federal government. After a challenge it has also remained legal to circumvent manufacturer locks that prevent the repair of medical equipment. This is good news in several long-running yet somehow related sagas that has resulted in both a huge number of McDonald’s ice cream machines and a large number of medical devices being broken at any given moment and which often cannot be fixed without the help of their manufacturer due to arbitrary software locks that prevent McDonald’s stores and also hospitals from fixing the devices they own.

  • fuckwit_mcbumcrumble@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    5·
    4 days ago

    I hate that they used the word hack.

    The exemption that allows for the circumvention of software locks on “a lawfully acquired medical device or system, and related data files, when circumvention is a necessary step to allow the diagnosis, maintenance, or repair of such a device or system

    This is particuarly for figuring out just WTF is wrong with the device without having some approved person come diagnose it. It’s just like buying an OBD2 adapter and using it to scan the car for problems. Before it would be illegal to make your own reader, now it’s legal.