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Uber Now Blocked All Over Germany
An anonymous reader writes Following the blocking of Uber in Berlin, DE, the district court of Frankfurt/Main has issued a restraining order for Uber services all over Germany (German original). The district court is alleging "uncompetitive behavior" (Unlauteres Wettbewerbsverhalten) on Uber's part, and has proclaimed that not following the restraining order will result in a fine of €250.000 or imprisonment. This ruling is related to the German "Personenbeförderungsgesetz" and is outlining that no legal entity (person, enterprise) is allowed to transfer passengers without having passed the relevant tests and having the appropriate insurance coverage.
There is no "ruling", there is a preliminary injunction -- the court hasn't ruled anything. Also, this injunction only affects the "Uber Pop" service, which is only one of the services Uber offers in Germany.
You want to play in our market? Play by our rules. Don't claim that your 'innovative new paradigm' renders those rules obselete and ignore them.
Do it for any reason other than being "uncompetitive". What the heck is so "uncompetitive"?
It takes money from the taxi monopoly and the state doesn't get their cut of fees, taxes and licensing money. Can't have that so it must be uncompetitive.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
It might refer to Uber having their employees book fake rides on other taxi services, then cancelling.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
The drivers carry no taxi medallions, pass no certification or training, do not carry appropriate insurance and Uber has already been found to be engaged in anti-competitive practices by having their users order bogus rides on competing services and canceling them after the driver is en route, increasing the wait time and preventing the drivers from getting fares.
Fuck Uber, they are slime balls and give the peer economy a bad rap.
We are all better off without their ilk.
- no insurance in case of accidents (insurance for person transport costs about 10x what a normal car owner pays for his car alone) ...shall I continue?
- no rigorous technical car checks as they are required for cabs
- no transport obligation (a cab here HAS to transport you, even if you just want to go around the corner)
- no reliable costs (cabs here cost the same all the time, no matter whether it's an early morning in march or New Year's eve)
- no proper filing of taxes
- no right for the drivers to form a workers council, therefore dumping payment is to be expected
- no health insurance, no social insurance, no pension payments for the drivers
(it might be, that some of these points don't apply to US cabs as well, here they don't)
It's more "FU people who think profit uber alles is the right way to do business" laws. That you identify that as uniquely American is pretty telling.
And Virginia, California, and Colorado are at the top of the "FU America Law".
I heard that Virginia once tried to break up the US and even went to war with them! How un-American they are.
The term "Unlauteres Wettbewerbsverhalten" does not mean "uncompetitive behavior"; it means "competition that violates good taste" or "competition that violates moral standards". A better translation might be "unfair competition".
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/U...
How so?
The rules in question here are questions of insurance, of proper training for drivers, of car maintenance... the same rules that cab drivers and companies in Germany have been following for many years.
How are these rules 'made to prevent US companies from gaining traction'?
Unless of course, having local law that everybody (local companies as well as US companies) have to follow is preventing US companies in your eyes. I mean, sure, they are not used to actually having to follow laws they don't like. It's real mean of European governments and regulators to actually check whether companies follow the law...
If you look at the details of this laws you will realize, no one even knew about the unitied states when those laws where crafted. ... so we do actually know that that country exists. For you guys europe was long a myth, turning reality in WW I and more so in WW II and now you believe it is your 53rd state of the union. Hint: it is not.
You just where a backyard country 6000km ( cough cough 4000 miles) away over the atlantic ocean.
Granted, some of our grand parents brothers and sisters emigrated to there
Many people here in europe indeed have a FU america attitude, but that is against your country, your nation, your governement, your corporations (which Uber happens to be one) not against 'you'. Individual americans are very welcome here.
After all they are usually polite, educated and curious. Unlike the average american /. poster who thinks his country is the navel of the world and the world is rotating around that navel.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Germans have rules and regulations for everything. You can give two strangers a ride when you meet them at a party without problems but as soon as the state's koffers are affected you need the Personenbeförderungsgesetz. You can use illegally obtained evidence to convict tax evaders but the same court prohibits the use of dashcam recordings as evidence (because they violate some privacy law) if you want to take a traffic offender to court. Some logic there.... As Nietzsche said some 150 years ago: The state is the worst of all monsters - it claims to speak for the people - but it only speaks for itself.
This isn't about protectionism.
This is about countries having laws and expecting everybody to follow them.
Sure, US companies are not used to do that, but that is a problem of the US, not of the other countries.
Germany has laws regulating persons and companies that want to be active in the transport business. These laws where not made to keep US companies out. The laws are a lot older than Uber. They are there to protect consumers and give them a certain amount of safety.
Ubers profits are not more important than everybodies safety.
It's a grey area and the companies you link already have had some problems. However, the companies themselves already link the limits on their sites themselves:
No, that's fraud, and should be treated as such.
I suppose victims of a DNS should just suck it up?
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
+1 Informative
The hype around Uber and the low prices is based on not paying for proper insurance, permits, qualifications or ensuring the maintenance of the cars. It's unfair competition by undermining businesses by purposely ignoring laws passed by the democratic will of the people.
It's called "anti-competitive dumping" and its purpose is to drive lawful services out of the market.
Tubby or not tubby. Fat is the question
Keep in mind they would not be facing these injunctions if they were playing by the same rules as the competition. It is kinda like a street vender skipping on sales tax, of course they can offer lower prices if they do not have to pay taxes, but that is pretty unfair to the stores that are collecting it. Thus unfair trade practices.
This is pretty much what 'unlauterer Wettbewerb' means:
Fighting competition through illegal means, or gaining unfair advantage by not following the rules of the business.
And it was decided by a court.
So there.. exactly what you wanted.
So it will be interesting to see how the courts explain how these services are different.
The decision explicitely mentions the fact that Uber and the drivers are doing it for profit.
The Mitfahrzentralen work on a no profit basis, and the drivers don't make a profit either and would drive that way anyway.
That is at the core of the issue. Either allow all taxi drivers to operate without license or regulation, or require uber drivers to meet those requirements. Anything else would seem unfair to me.
Erm, what exactly is to see or interesting to see there?
'Mitfahrgelegenheiten' allow it that a person who is traveling from A to B picks up another person that wants to go to B, and shares the fuel costs.
Uber is a commercial service where one person says it wants to go from A to B and another 'semi private' person agrees 'I have nothing better to do' and I can 'lift him for fuel payment and an extra payment(which I will share with Uber, my employer, cough cough).
And no once for ever, get it finally: we are not in the USA here where you have to call a court for every fart to decide 'oh, what might a court have to say in this, or that?'.
We have fucking written laws where 95% of everything you will ever encounter in your life is already determined and fixed. The situation as you always shout: 'lets see what the court says to x or y, or the GPL' simply does not exist here. In Europe it was never a question if 'the GPL would hold up in court' ... how can you be so brain dead? Sure, if you want to sue your neighbour because he did not cut his tree and a branch is going over into your garden, or if he sues you because you took an apple from that branch ... then you are in 'court law' (as opposite to book law) area ... but most of such disputes already happened hundreds if mot thousands of times. (No, your neighbour is usually not required to cut such a branch, and yes, the apples growing on your side you can pick for your own. However if the branch exceeds certain limits or is simply 'annoying' e.g. over a swimming pool, your neighbour is required to cut it)
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Yes, attacking government revenue streams is not exactly anti competative though. But this is the world we live in. This is such a hard thing to explain to the layperson.
You realize are real costs involved Uber isn't paying? Taxis are commercial services and part of their fees are used to maintain roads and public facilities they use more heavily than private drivers. They are also required to provide equal access and maintain a certain percentage of handicap accessible vehicles available at all times. They also have to carry the proper insurance because if they skirted the law on this point, the rest of us would end up paying.
And that's about what's happening with Uber and Lyft. We will end up paying the costs they are ignoring. To make matters worse, those costs will be spread out over everyone even those most will never use these services. As it's a semi-elite market, that translate to those who can least afford it will subsidize cheaper rides for those who can and we'll all pay added tax dollars essentially straight into the pockets of Uber's founders. I can't blame Germany for being smart and making them follow the rules.
Because it's not. Trade exists only where property exists. Property exists only where a state exists -- "ownership" is exactly and only the ability to call on state force to maintain your control of something. Trace any claim of "property" back and you find a state-issued piece of paper, a land or resource deed.
Used properly, property and trade are ways that we help protect basic human rights. They are not rights in themselves. Our neglect of that principle is at the root of many of the world's problems today.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
And how about the freedom of people having a democratic vote on laws that restrict some freedoms in return for other things they may find important ?
Few people actually believe in freedom of speech, and almost no countries allow it
Well, I actually don't understand how Uber started operating in the first place. In Germany, before you start operating a business, it needs to be registered (Gewerbe anmelden). Did Uber say that they were running a taxi service? Or did they fudge it as something else? If it was clear that they were running a taxi service, they would have been informed that they would have to follow the regulations for taxi services. Or did Uber just ignore this?
Usually when a company opens up business in a foreign country, they hire a local consultant, most likely a law firm, to make sure that the business will not run afoul of local laws. I don't understand how Uber was allowed to start operating at all, if what they are doing is illegal.
And in this case . . . it DOES look like they were allowed to operate . . . until a court made a decision that they must stop.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
Many regulations are in place to assure safety and the public good. However, all too often, the regulated get control of the regulatory agencies ("regulatory capture") and then regulations are created to preserve the incumbents dominant market position and/or business model.
[Insert pithy quote here]
I don't see the problem here.
The problem is that in Germany we generally (there are exceptions) don't like to let people die out i the streets because they made a stupid decision. These uninsured health bills will still get paid, by taxes.
"When I first heard Daydream Nation it quite frankly scared the living shit out of me." -- Matthew Stearns
Uber is really two different service providers. There's "Uber Black" that provides usually very nice black car services with professional drivers at 20-40% higher rates than a taxi - I love this personally and use it a ton when I travel. Then there's UberX which tries to do the same with random individuals who own a car for 20-40% lower rates than a taxi. These two services have almost nothing to do with each other, and its the second one that everyone basically has a problem with.
You're special forces then? That's great! I just love your olympics!
This applies for all taxicab companies, no matter their size. What Uber is doing is to make an end-run around those laws by offering taxicab rides from drivers who *don't* meet those requirements. Makes it easy to undercut people who do abide by the law eh? Sounds like unfair competition to me.
So how the hell is enforcing such laws "Socialist"?
And whoever decided this Anonymous Coward's drive-by comment qualifies as "insightful"?
The NYC medallions are transferable property, so the fee for the medallion doesn't go to the city, it goes to the seller.
To be fair (you're responding to my post), in San Francisco the permit sticker (equivalent to NYC medallion) is non-transferable, so you're paying ~$150,000 to the city. But it's not a real source of income to the city, because they city rarely issues new ones, and turn-over is low. Usually what happens is 3 or 4 guys put up the money together, and also some banks will issue business loans to acquire the permit.
So, again, the whole point of the monopoly is to benefit taxi drivers. It's definitely not a taxation scam by the city or state; not in any way, shape, or form. You can research the history yourself. IIRC it started in either NYC or maybe Chicago, because prior to these schemes everybody with four wheels and an engine would pretend to be a taxi. It didn't provide a stable income, which meant there were serious quality and consistency issues.
I'm just pointing out the facts in the hopes of pointing out some cognitive dissonance here. I don't personally have any strong opinions wrt Uber. Times have changed, and it would be wrong to simple argue that without these regulations we would necessarily revert to the bad old times. But you can't simply ignore their function, either. And that doesn't even get into the whole insurance issue.
Uber, Lyft, etc drivers absolutely-fscking-lutely should be properly insured, often times they're not, and that's just plain wrong.
"suddenly there is unfair competition?"
It's not the app. Yes, you can drive people around the city in your car, but once you start charging them to take them somewhere, you are operating a taxi service.
Either we overregulate these services and all taxi companies should be able to operate in an unregulated manner, or we have sufficient regulation and therefore Uber must play by the rules. But the status quo is certainly neither fair nor sustainable.
And those regulations have been unfairly corrupted to feed a few players. DO not bleat on about fairness when the industry in question is unabashedly corrupt. ANYONE that wants to drive a taxi should be able to secure licensing from the city for a NOMINAL fee.
Good-bye
I think its a case of German law makers thinking: If it looks like a taxi, and acts like a taxi, then it should be regulated like a taxi. Can't really fault them on this.
The bigger issue is that Uber, Lyft, etc. are trying to take advantage of the lag between what is available (Hail a taxi via an app), and what the current incumbent do now, by bypassing the current laws. This is admirable from a competition perspective, but not by sacrificing all laws to get there and compete.
Uber is notorious at this point for operating full steam ahead, against regulation, and even court rulings, to get into place. I am not surprised Germany took a dim view of their antics and slapped them.
http://www.theverge.com/2014/8/26/6067663/this-is-ubers-playbook-for-sabotaging-lyft
Some regulations are in place to protect drivers, others are in place to protect passengers. To declare yourself immune to them all is lovely, but its as effective as me declaring myself King of the Internet and demanding all my subjects to send me $5.
Adding "with the help of a mobile app" to the end of your business plan, does not suddenly make a brand new industry and to pretend otherwise is delusional (except to shareholders or venture capitalists).
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In Europe trying to refute an action by calling it socialist doesn't work.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
The dirty tricks you listed all take the same form: excluding people from the market. If you believe that we all have a fundamental right to buy and sell and provide services and otherwise participate in commerce, then the only discussion is how best to approach that ideal. Laws that grant monopolies or create significant barriers to entry are wholly bad under that lens.
Of course there's a tension there between that freedom and a different set of dirty tricks: fraud and unsafe products. There's very little dissent, outside of the extreme corners of libertarianism, that regulations to insure some sort of minimum quality/safety are good in principle. But it's quite odd how, whenever someone suggests that the market is unduly restricted by heavy-handed government monopoly granting, the speaker is accused of wanting to destroy safety regulations.
If you want a market where it's easy for anyone to participate, you want both minimum-possible government barriers to entry and a significant government role in fraud prevention and safety. It's not a "more vs less government" argument at all, really. That's just a distraction. The real question is "given that we need some government role in product safety and fraud prevention, how do we prevent that grant of power to the government from being twisted and corrupted into monopoly-granting?"
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.