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Europe's Top Court To Decide If Uber Is Tech Firm Or Taxi Company
An anonymous reader writes: A Spanish judge has requested that the European Court of Justice determine whether or not Uber is a generic "digital service," as it claims, or a "mere transport activity." If the court rules that Uber is a transportation firm the company may have to follow the same licensing and safety rules as taxis and other hired vehicles. "Today's news means that the European Court of Justice will now determine if the national rules currently being applied to digital services like Uber are legal and appropriate under European law," said Mark MacGann, Uber's Head of Public Policy for EMEA, on a conference call with journalists.
It's a taxi company
I can order a taxi online already. Why would a particular implementation of ordering transport online suddenly make it something completely different?
If you take away the cars, Uber no longer has anything to sell. If you take away the online app, they could switch to some other channel and continue.
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I have a relative who dealt with a surgeon who was the only game in town in his specialty. Turned out that the man hadn't bothered to do much to update his knowledge of his specialty in about 15-20 years. Several surgeries later, the relative ended up going to a major regional university's affiliated hospital. They had to tell her that due to his use of outdated techniques, all of which were "safe" by the standards of the licensing committee, the best they could offer her would be to moderately repair the damage he did and there was simply no way she'd ever be right again. They said that had she gone to them or someone else in the same field who bothered to keep up, she'd have probably recovered just fine or at least would have had the majority of her pain and functional issues gone.
People in favor of licensing professionals would say "imagine how much worse it could have been." We say "imagine how much harder he'd have worked if he had more competition." If licensing and regulation doesn't keep professionals like doctors and lawyers in line, I see absolutely no benefit to putting up barriers to entry in jobs like taxi driving. Toughen up the liability laws and make it easier to win on "failure to do (what is reasonably known by practitioners) right."
Who runs the meter and collects the money?
What can you do with UBER, as a user? You may request a cab and pay for the ride. What about a driver? You get ride requests, payments for the rides and incentives to buy your own car. The final service: take passenger from point A to point B. Isn't this exactly what the "cab unions" have been doing for decades with voucher systems and a telephone central?
If Uber doesn't want to be a Taxi company, then they should really stop focusing so much on carrying people around in cars.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
This is one of few instances when courts would be wise to do nothing and refuse to rule on the question.
The question is meaningless the same way it is meaningless for the court to rule whether the boiled egg needs to be cracked at the sharp end or the rounder end.
I would also like to remind the famous French Candle makers' petition asking the lawmakers to intervene:
"We (French candle-makers) are suffering from the ruinous competition of a foreign rival who apparently works under conditions so far superior to our own for the production of light that he is flooding the domestic market with it at an incredibly low price; for the moment he appears, our sales cease, all the consumers turn to him, and a branch of French industry whose ramifications are innumerable is all at once reduced to complete stagnation. This rival, which is none other than the sun.
We ask you to be so good as to pass a law requiring the closing of all windows, dormers, skylights, inside and outside shutters, curtains, casements, bull's-eyes, deadlights, and blinds — in short, all openings, holes, chinks, and fissures through which the light of the sun wont to enter houses, to the detriment of the fair industries with which, we are proud to say, we have endowed the country, a country that cannot, without betraying ingratitude, abandon us today to so unequal a combat."
http://mjperry.blogspot.com/20...
What a bullshit. They should instead adapting the law to the changing times. This is like deciding whether a computer is an abacus or a typewriter.
This should depend greatly on the factual record.
Surely it should be possible that a company arranges for people to get rides from private persons. Any other ruling from the Court would be dreadful. Whether Uber is really just helping people to find a driver (or a rider), or whether it is really holding itself out as a taxi service is another matter. Similarly, it is possible that Uber could use truly independent contractors; whether Uber's current arrangements with its drivers qualifies as an employment relationship is a separate question.
What we need from the Court is a clear explanation of what will distinguish an information service helping people to find each other from a taxi service. Then the lower court should apply those rules to Uber - and if Uber doesn't like the outcome, it will be free to alter itself so as to stay on the non-a-taxi-company side of the rules, just as it can alter its agreement with its drivers so as to avoid creating an employment relationship.
Uber in several EU countries obeys the laws and is a taxi booking service. Booking proper taxis licensed in according to the local taxi laws. And any of the drivers that wish to offer taxi services are free to do so, as long as they apply for and obey the local laws.
But that secret trade agreement the US has been pushing through, has a very nasty clause in it: Corporate Sovereignty.
If the secret trade agreement goes through, Uber would be able to sue Spain, Germany etc. and a secret court made up of lawyers for the corporations would decide if Germany and Spain need to change their taxi laws to suit Uber. No democratic process overrules this, its to be done in secret by corporate lawyers.
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20150325/17151130431/corporate-sovereignty-provisions-tpp-agreement-leaked-via-wikileaks-would-massively-undermine-government-sovereignty.shtml
No wonder so much effort has gone into hiding this treaty from the public. And you can imagine the full force of the NSA/GCHQ surveillance data has been used to 'encourage' politicians to agree to this.
Either uber or the drivers need to be licensed.
The court will only decide which is which.
I know for those Republican rulers of Uber it is a mental challenge, but for normal people it isn't. It's just a car. It isn't a rocket. They're so stupid.
This trend that started in the dot.bomb 90s to label every business that uses the Internet or now mobile apps as technology companies is just another way to get these ridiculous valuations and moronic IPO prices.
Just because you sell groceries or car rides or show the weather via an app does not make it a tech company. Unfortunately, I see all too often on Wall Street.
Really, not much more can be said. A 'ridesharing' service could still exist without their software, but their software couldn't exist without a ridesharing service.
First they'd need to become a ride-sharing service. Currently they are rather far from that, right in the "taxi company" territory.
Spain has a history of doing stupid things involving the Internet.
Their "unintended consequence" to forcing search services to not list headlines from news services unless payment for the content happened, was that they got delisted from news.google.com and other Google search results.
"We wanted you to pay us, not delist us!" was a stupid response to the delisting.
The unintended consequence in this case, should the court agree to hear it, is that there will be a single law on the books regulating taxi companies in all EU countries as a result.
This "cure" will likely be worse than the "disease", in terms of overall fallout.
The word is 'flout,' not flaunt. They don't mean the same thing.
Having grown up near O'Hare airport, taxi's to me are cars, with the word TAXI on it, that drive around waiting to be flagged down or that wait in a queue for the next passenger at the airport. Do Uber drivers scope out the neighborhood looking for a fare, or do they exclusively wait for an online beckoning? To me Uber seems to be a bunch of junior limo's without the booze or livery license plates.
Uber could not be a pimp, they just facilitate the matching up of hookers and johns, process the payments and take a cut.
Uber could not be a slave trader, they just facilitate the matching up of slaves and slave owners, process the payments and take a cut.
Uber could not be a murder for hire company, they just facilitate the matching up of assassins and people who need someone dead...
Don't worry, it's just digital services, nothing illegal going on at all!
It is a commodities trader on Wall Street, a hedge fund, whatever. Somehow it is valued at 50 billion(!) while Sikorsky can be bought for 7. How screwed up is that? Big ol' bubble machine at work there.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
1) I have yet to meet an unsafe driver. These people driving for both services care about what they're doing unlike Taxi drivers. I've been nearly killed more times than I care to count by Taxi drivers who are working a long shift or who got their licenses in cracker jack boxes.
2) If there's a problem, it gets resolved quickly with Uber or Lyft. With a Taxi company I have to deal with a local government bureaucracy who rarely follow up or actually deal with the complaint. I'm talking about you DC Taxi Commission.
3) I travel frequently on business, I get one set of bills and it's concise not scribbled out and also not billed to some third party company you've never heard of.
4) The pricing is consistent and easy to understand, not some byzantine billing scheme where just getting in the cab can cost you an arm and a leg. I also don't get taken for a ride so to speak, you know when the driver pads the meter.
5) Obtaining a ride and tracking it is easy.
Uber and Lyft can be put out of business very quickly if the protected monopoly of Taxi companies and various commissions just started offering a more competitive environment; that's the big threat here. You have a service that comes in and undercuts a cash cow for governments and for license holders. They don't like it because it threatens their bottom line and that's a valid argument but instead of being more competitive, they protest and burn things (like in France recently)
I also agree that whoever is driving me should be screened, a safe driver and the vehicle I'm in should be safe and reliable but I'd argue that a lot of Taxis at least in the US don't meet that criteria regardless of the litany of bureaucratic organizations that are supposed to make sure that it is. I also want these services not to use me as a mined resource for further profit. If I can get all of that from a Taxi cab, I'll use them more.
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
What does it matter? It's just as relevant to launch a commission into whether or not its a violation of some sort for Uber to spell its name without the umlaut/rock-dots.
The outrage here should be why the state is spending trillions of eurodrachmas to decide the pool from which they want to draw the bureaucrats that will ultimately only get in the way of Uber going about doing what it does.
Why doesn't Uber answer that question? It's not a taxi company. You take away the app, they own nothing. Cars are not theirs, the taxi drivers are not theirs to fire since they are already taxi drivers with their own cars, or would-be taxi drivers just looking for a quick buck. Then again, if they ARE indeed a taxi company, then they should pay a license like anyone else who wants to run a taxi service has to. I prefer a traditional cab. I would much rather support a traditional cab service then these guys who came storming on to the scene pissing off a whole load of people. Uber hired no end of "top notch" university people. Seems like they didn't bring much to the arena if Uber are continually in and out of courts, and being banned. Perhaps if they had looked at whose toes they would be treading on first, they might have gotten off to a better start. Uber and what they do or don't do = YAWN
I know a guy who drives Uber in his free time on weekends. He ubers if he doesn't end up having weekend plans. He typically has a couple of beers or a couple of cocktails before he goes out ubering.
I no longer take uber.
Of course, taxi drivers could be doing this too, for all I know; but at least with taxi drivers, you have the illusion of professionalism, because hey, they are taxi drivers for a living and have their livelihoods at stake.
Except for her lack of a privately-issued certificate and good online reviews. IMHO the problem isn't licenses, it's mandatory licenses from a specific entity, which puts no pressure on the licensing authority to compete with other authorities (or none at all, using reviews alone).
When Uber and Lyft started out, they were "ride sharing". That meant you look up someone who is going where you are going and car pool.
The driver is still headed to work or where ever and just got a couple bucks for gas. It was not supposed to be a job for the driver.
Once the drivers started getting fares, not just car poolers, it became a taxi company.
No, the drivers are the cab companies. Uber is a dispatcher or facilitator.
And its realistic, in that scenario, to expect that Uber is dispatching to drivers who have the necessary license and are enough covered by insurances.
How would you react if, when asking a hotel to book you a taxi, the receptionist call a shady thing (the boss' cousin's neighbours who just happens to own a car) instead of a legit and recognized company ?
I would similarily expect Uber to do a minimal check to make sure that the driver is following local rules.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Turned out that the man hadn't bothered to do much to update his knowledge of his specialty in about 15-20 years.
And in some countries this *IS* considered a problem.
Medical Doctors are required to attend conferences, etc. just to keep up to date.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
In the medium run the losers are the municipalities with their taxi company medallion tax revenues. But they too would adapt, it was not too long ago the hotels had a cash cow in the land line phones. Remember dialing a 10 digit 800 number, then a 10 digit calling card number and then a 4 digit password and then the 10 digit number of the party you wanted to call? Else pony up and pay 2$ a minute for long distance and a quarter per local call. The hotels adapted to the loss of that cash cow didn't they? Municipalities will adapt.
In the long run the danger is to the car companies. Cars are the second most expensive thing a person buys, next to home. And it remains idle 95% of the time. It loses 10 to 25% value the second you drive out of the dealer's lot and steadily loses value. Anything that makes renting cars cheaper and more convenient would bite into auto sales.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
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