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Court Orders UberPop Use To Be Banned In All of Italy

Posted by timothy on from the fiat-accompli dept.

An anonymous reader writes: A judicial court in Italy has ordered the UberPop app to cease offering its services [original source, in Italian], as it constitutes "unfair competition" again the taxi sector (taxi licenses in Italy are numbered, each can cost more than $100k to obtain). This sentence should be valid at the national level and comes after an injunction from taxi drivers in Milan, where a Universal Exhibition is incidentally bringing in thousands visitors from all over the world on a daily basis. Sources mention a judicial request to "block" the app, though no one is sure how this sentence has to be enforced and what the fines would be in case of violations.

14 of 201 comments (clear)

  1. Well there's the problem... by MitchDev · · Score: 3, Insightful

    "(taxi licenses in Italy are numbered, each can cost more than $ 100k to obtain)."

    There's the problem. Piss off Italy...

    1. Re:Well there's the problem... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      "(taxi licenses in Italy are numbered, each can cost more than $ 100k to obtain)."

      There's the problem. Piss off Italy...

      As if there's no public interest in limiting the number of taxis on the road. If licenses weren't numbered, the proliferation of taxis would render city streets unnavigable. They are a public resource, and may not be monopolized by ride-for-hire services.

      But no, we all must be butthurt about unfair competition, as if the only thing that matters is the unregulated jitney operator.

    2. Re:Well there's the problem... by Holi · · Score: 3, Informative

      Same way here, and it's for a very good reason. Let's take NY, Imagine NYC with twice as many taxi's on the road. It happened and it made it extremely hard for emergency vehicles and anyone who wasn't a tax, or really just wanted to go anywhere. So they implemented a medallion system to limit the number of cabs on the road. See it's not a conspiracy involving the "taxi lobby", in fact it's to protect us from them.

      --
      Sorry, teleporters just kill you and then make a copy. A perfect, soul-less copy.
    3. Re:Well there's the problem... by CrimsonAvenger · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Let's take NY, Imagine NYC with twice as many taxi's on the road.

      Hmm, let's do that...

      So, we double the 13000-odd taxis to 27000-odd taxis.

      And then we compare that to the 30% of New Yorkers who use private autos to commute to work. So, 30% of 17+ million is about 5 million privately owned cars on the road daily.

      Now, it seems to me that 13K taxis is about 0.25% of the total autos on the roads, so when we double the number of taxis, we should have about 0.25% MORE vehicles on the road in NYC.

      Somehow I don't see one extra car for every 400 currently on the road to be a meaningful issue....

      --

      "I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
    4. Re:Well there's the problem... by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 4, Insightful

      As if there's no public interest in limiting the number of taxis on the road.

      No, there is no public interest in inhibiting fair competition. This is about protecting vested private interests, not the public interest.

      If licenses weren't numbered, the proliferation of taxis would render city streets unnavigable.

      Hogwash. The supply would only be high if the demand was high. If there were too many taxis and not enough passengers, then some drivers would go home and take the day off. Free markets don't solve every problem, but they can solve this one.

    5. Re:Well there's the problem... by Richard_at_work · · Score: 4, Interesting

      If you want to see how extreme unregulated taxi services can get, I suggest visiting Kampala or some other city in a sub-Saharan country sometime - 500 drivers all vying for the same fair, to the extent where fights actually break out and the passenger is physically pulled this way and that, 30 people jammed into an 8 person minibus. Yeah, some regulation is just common sense.

    6. Re:Well there's the problem... by LoyalOpposition · · Score: 3, Informative

      Same way here, and it's for a very good reason. Let's take NY, Imagine NYC with twice as many taxi's on the road. It happened and it made it extremely hard for emergency vehicles and anyone who wasn't a tax, or really just wanted to go anywhere. So they implemented a medallion system to limit the number of cabs on the road. See it's not a conspiracy involving the "taxi lobby", in fact it's to protect us from them.

      That would be an interesting story if it were true; it's not. The medallion system was not instituted because of traffic congestion. Rather it was instituted because the growth of taxis during the depression resulted in more taxis than passengers. Taxi drivers began working longer hours, and there was public concern about the mechanical integrity and maintenance of the taxis. The first proposed taxi monopoly didn't go into effect because the mayor was accused of taking a bribe from the largest taxi company. Strangely, a lack of maintenance is more associated with monopoly than it is with competition, and it's entirely feasible that La Guardia, the mayor who finally instituted a taxi monopoly, was merely not caught accepting his bribe.

      ~Loyal

      --
      I aim to misbehave.
    7. Re:Well there's the problem... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

      You forgot something. Each taxi is on the road all day, a private auto is not.

    8. Re:Well there's the problem... by gstoddart · · Score: 5, Insightful

      No, there is no public interest in inhibiting fair competition. This is about protecting vested private interests, not the public interest.

      No, that is bullshit.

      If you want fair competition, you have to do it under the same rules as everyone else.

      Not by throwing a tantrum like a spoiled child and deciding the rules don't apply to you.

      This has nothing to do with fair competition, or protecting entrenched players. This is about governments having the authority to pass laws, and whiny idiots claiming they don't want laws.

      Uber wants to run a illegal cabs, contrary to the law. The problem isn't the existence of the law. it's that Uber are a bunch of whiny self-entitled douchbags whose business model relies on running illegal cabs and playing the victim card.

      Free markets don't solve every problem, but they can solve this one.

      Your desire to have the mythical unicorn of the free market still doesn't change the reality that those laws exist, they exist for a reason, and it's not up to Uber to decide what the law is.

      Uber aren't the champions of truth and justice ... they're a greedy corporation who think they are something special.

      But don't let reality stand in the way of your libertarian fantasy world.

      --
      Lost at C:>. Found at C.
    9. Re:Well there's the problem... by BasilBrush · · Score: 3, Informative

      Possibilities:
      1) The examples are in different places. They are both possible and actual outcomes of unregulated taxis.
      2) The "fares" are different people. A tourist is going to be very desirable and a local commuter very undesirable, as in an unregulated city, the taxis can charge what they can get away with. Which is a hell of a lot more with a rich tourist than a local.

    10. Re:Well there's the problem... by BasilBrush · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I think the reality is somewhere between the two. It's nuanced. Few things are black and white.

      There is a value to regulated taxis. I support them. But where regulation is not being updated to allow new mobile phone app services which are good for passengers, drivers and even other road users, then clearly there is a legislation problem. And civil disobedience is a legitimate way to highlight bad law.

    11. Re:Well there's the problem... by BasilBrush · · Score: 3, Insightful

      If everyone who wants to provide a taxi service has to pay the same price for a license, it's fair.
      of, on the other hand, somebody would try to enter the market without paying for taxi licenses *cough* Uber *cough* then they would not be competing fairly.

      It's not a matter of saving the taxi-license cost. Uber absolutely works within the licensing law in countries & cities such as mine who's regulations have provision for the mobile phone based service they offer.

      They only operate illegally in places with outdated laws that have not been updated for 21st century technology.

  2. Re:The cab drivers... by Shados · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I don't know about this case, but on this side of the world, it wasn't that simple.

    These Uber and Lyfts didn't go and bully themselves in the taxi industry. They originally operated differently: You never needed a medallion to run a car service. -You needed a medallion to pick up people hailing you in the street.-

    That is very different. What these new startups did, was use technology to remove the need to hail a cab. I could always just go and call a non-taxi car service with a phone. No one needed a medallion to pick me up after i called them.

    Since hailing a cab is now obsolete, medallions are obsolete.

    If your engineer needed to pay 100k to do work that isn't pre-arranged.....blah, the analogy falls apart so hard I can't even fix it.

  3. Re:Holy hell by Firethorn · · Score: 3, Informative

    When a driver wants to get out of the business they have to sell the medallion to someone else and hope they've paid off enough on it to break even.

    First, most cab drivers in NYC don't own a medallion. The cab company they're working for owns it and essentially rents it out to it's drivers. They also rent out the cab itself, but the cab is actually cheaper(rent wise) than the medallion. There's a limited number of 'owner-operator' medallions where one of the requirements is that the owner drive the cab for X hours/day on average, and they tend to be cheaper than the unrestricted ones.

    Second, medallions, especially owner-operator ones, have generally appreciated in value sufficient that they're more often treated as part of the owner's retirement plan/investment than 'hope to break even'.

    That's crashing right now, which kind of sucks for those that invested under the assumptions of the 'old system'.

    --
    I don't read AC A human right