McDonald’s soft-serve ice cream machines are regularly broken, and it’s not just your perception. When repair vendor and advocate iFixit was filming a video about the topic, it checked tracking map McBroken and found that 34 percent of the machines in the state of New York were reported inoperable. As I write this, the nationwide number of broken machines is just above 14 percent.

To improve the nation’s semi-frozen milk fat infrastructure, iFixit has done two things. One, as first reported by 404 Media, is to join with interest group Public Knowledge to petition the Copyright Office for an exemption allowing people to fix commercial equipment, such as McDonald’s ice cream machines and other industrial kitchen equipment, without fear of reprisal under Section 1201 of the DMCA.

  • @[email protected]
    link
    fedilink
    English
    -601 year ago

    Not in the USA, but my password is my unique key that in cryptic my data, so therefore an FBI or any other agency is not allowed to pass it even if they could, no? As I’m the person who rode this password and therefore am the copyright holder of that password.

    • @Arbiter
      link
      English
      141 year ago

      What are you talking about?

    • roguetrick
      link
      fedilink
      12
      edit-2
      1 year ago

      Courts decide what a creative work is, not your personal attestation. Courts will not decide that your password is a creative work, in pretty much any context. You can’t copyright a password.

        • roguetrick
          link
          fedilink
          2
          edit-2
          1 year ago

          Only if the FBI is using rainbow tables of artworks to decrypt your hash I think. /s

    • @coffeebiscuit
      link
      English
      71 year ago

      As longe as you don’t do crimes …

      Is the police allowed to enter your house when needed by law?

      Besides this, you are probably replying the wrong post.

    • @JustAManOnAToilet
      link
      English
      31 year ago

      You might be thinking of the password vs fingerprint phone unlock. Courts decided that while your fingerprint could be compelled, you couldn’t be compelled to reveal your password as that was private knowledge. That isn’t due to copyright though, it’s a 5th Amendment issue here in the US (The Fifth Amendment grants anyone in the U.S. the right to remain silent, which includes the right to not turn over information that could incriminate them in a crime. These days, those protections extend to the passcodes that only a device owner knows).

      • @Bassman1805
        link
        English
        31 year ago

        We’ve written plenty of legal justification around it, but ultimately it just comes down to the fact that police CAN physically place your finger into your phone, but cannot extract a password from your brain that you don’t want to give up.

        If we had the ability to read minds, there’d be legal justification to grab your password within a year.

          • @[email protected]
            link
            fedilink
            English
            31 year ago

            You can always put your phone into lockdown mode so that the password is required to unlock the phone, not just your fingerprint.

            Face and fingerprint unlock is too convenient for me to not have it at all.

            • hoodatninja
              link
              fedilink
              5
              edit-2
              1 year ago

              That requires me to do it potentially under duress, with little to no time, etc. During a crisis it can’t be assumed that the first thing I’ll do is lockdown my phone. Anything that requires an anticipatory step is inherently risky.

        • brianorca
          link
          English
          21 year ago

          There are technologies the police are not allowed to use for constitutional reasons. If brain reading was a thing, the 5th amendment would still protect you. Not that they wouldn’t try before getting smacked down.