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Uber Raided By Dutch Authorities, Seen As 'Criminal Organization'
An anonymous reader writes: Uber offices in Amsterdam have been raided by Dutch authorities, as reported by several local media sources (Google translation of original in Dutch). This follows intimidatory deterrence practices earlier in The Netherlands, with Uber drivers being fined in the past months, and fresh allegations that the company would act as a "criminal organization" by offering a platform for taxi rides without license (read: without the authorities earning money from the practice). Time for tech companies to consider moving their European offices elsewhere?
Uber's lawyers must be incredibly busy. Proposed regulations in London would effectively end the company's service there, while the mayor of Rio de Janeiro said he would ban Uber's operations outright. They're receiving mixed messages from Australia — just a day after running afoul of regulations in New South Wales, the Australian Capital Territory is moving to legalize it.
... who would clean your dead body out of your apartment after someone killed you for your pizza.
Yeah, fuck the gubment and all their silly rules.
It is currently not allowed to offer taxi services without a permit (and related stuff: insurance, markings on the car etc. depending on EU-country).
Work to change the law before you start the business.
There are lots of things you can't do without certification/permits/etc. If your plan is to fuck it all then you ARE working outside of the law. (car analogy: building your own car and not approving it - or in tax-insane Finland: paying car import tax on the burocrat-estimated worth of your self-built car).
Why the scare quotes around 'criminal organisation'? Uber's business model is to break the laws of every country they operate in and then hoping that the authorities are too timid to crack down on them. That by definition makes them a criminal organisation.
Oh, and nice bit of LOLbertarian bias in the summary.
In an attempt to cut through the bullshit of what *might* happen and work directly from evidence, I came across a report of a Cato institute study:
A Cato Institute study shows key differences between rideshare services and taxis, but passenger safety isn't one of them.
The other differences are not as important and will probably get solved by other means. For example, cleanliness of the ride, courtesy of the driver, and gypping the customer can be handled by the Uber feedback system.
The economists here are quick to point out the importance of liquidity, and Uber adds much needed liquidity to the taxi system.
Can anyone justify the expense and bureaucracy of taxi medallions when passenger safety isn't an issue?
"Time for tech companies to consider moving their European offices elsewhere?"
how about, Time for tech companies to stop thinking local laws don't fucking apply to them. Either obey the law, fight to get the laws changed or get the fuck out of the market. NO company should get to decide what laws they will and won't obey, that is a slippery slope that no one wants to be on.
What doesn't Uber understand about municipal codes? Yes, taxi service sucks, but just because I think I want to get to work faster doesn't mean I can break the speed limit. We have laws for a reason; if Uber wants to compete,it has to compete according to the LAW. If it wants to change the law, the ballot is where that should happen. After all, Uber is lining the pockets of politicians now, anyway - to let them help Uber break the law. It's absurd.
In the Netherlands we mostly have a mix of semi free market and government regulation.
The government sets the ground rules and free competition is possible within that platform.
Taxi drivers have to obey by many strict laws. Uber "taxis" do not.
The current position of the government is that Uber poses unfair competition as Uber users do not comply with the regulation required for Taxi drivers while essentialy offering the same services.
Technically, if Uber can make their drivers comply to the Taxi driver rules the app would be no problem.
Much of the advantage would be lost in the process though..
And it's a bit of a killer for innovation and keeps prices high.
Personally i like the sharing culture Uber promotes.
But i don't think the attitude towards Uber taxis will change anytime soon.
...in some countries. They're openly breaking the law. However - where regulations are faulty or problematic hampering the freedom of providing a valued service to the populace, this type of disruption is the only way to drive forward new growth markets and change 'the way' it is. Just because something is averse to a current corporate/government structure doesn't make it bad, although it is in many cases criminal.
I'd be curious about stats of Uber users - is it just a loud minority who aim their sites at the company? I'm guessing it is. Everyone I know who uses Uber loves it, and while I feel for the taxi drivers who pay into medallions or permits to drive cabs, markets....get.....disrupted......and this is a f'n good disruption.
Doesn't matter. A law is a law. Period.
Apropos of nothing, how do you feel about Rosa Parks not moving to the back of the bus?
Ueber likes to promote itself as a happy camper ride along service, but is morphing more and more into a global taxi sweatshop.
No longer is it just take on somebody for a ride, but exploiting legal loopholes to employ taxi drivers without any benefits, dodging taxes etc, and keep full control over them.
Err, why do you think that Uber is superior? Surge pricing during a Tube strike is a real bitch, as is the difficulty in arranging for a guaranteed 5am pick-up for the airport arranged the night before.
As a cyclist in London I've been having a lot of trouble recently with bad drivers all in Toyota Priuses with mobile phones on their dashboards. Simply coincidence that this has happened and got worse with the rise in popularity of Uber? These drivers are worse than the dickheads in the black Addison Lee vans. I'm all for some government regulation and taxation for these arseholes.
Fuck the taxi cartels and the governments that support them.
You mean fuck the Dutch government for abolishing the taxi cartels in 2000 ?
Uber is as always trying to avoid the costs of running a business by skirting around proper insurance, standardised equipment and related local laws. Even if there was an artificially high cost of entry into the market (which I could find no hint of) it would be hard to keep an international giant like Uber from operating legally.
How about, Time for tech companies to stop thinking local laws don't fucking apply to them. Either obey the law, fight to get the laws changed or get the fuck out of the market.
How about, "Time for taxi drivers to stop posting drivel and stop using "fuck" in every sentence?
The basis of law is justice. When laws are seen to be unjust, they are often struck down through the efforts of concerted civil disobedience. Prime examples are Rosa Parks not moving to the back of the bus, Martin Luthor's sit-ins, and the Boston Tea Party.
There, see that above? The section in bold? That's called an argument.
An argument is a connected series of statements intended to establish a proposition.
You want abuse - that's room 12.
Err, why do you think that Uber is superior? Surge pricing during a Tube strike is a real bitch, as is the difficulty in arranging for a guaranteed 5am pick-up for the airport arranged the night before.
As a cyclist in London I've been having a lot of trouble recently with bad drivers all in Toyota Priuses with mobile phones on their dashboards. Simply coincidence that this has happened and got worse with the rise in popularity of Uber? These drivers are worse than the dickheads in the black Addison Lee vans. I'm all for some government regulation and taxation for these arseholes.
Because the alternative to Uber and surge pricing is nobody being there to pick you up... ...due to artificial scarcity of "government approved" taxis
It's more than that, and you know it. Uber are choosing to have their drivers operate outside the local rules. Their drivers do not have insurance for passengers, and they do not have full background checks performed. So fuck yourself instead, moron.
Uber are more than welcome to compete, but like all the other companies, they have to adhere to the local laws. They have a system that works, they merely need to play by the rules.
Don't like the laws? The fuck off back to Murica, you won't be missed.
Maybe in your area, but that's not my experience. Their prices and availability are so random that it's not reasonable to make plans around them. I can imagine how much worse they'd get if they didn't have to compete with regular taxi and private hire car firms.
and fresh allegations that the company would act as a "criminal organization" by offering a platform for taxi rides without license (read: without the authorities earning money from the practice)
Nice one there.
Get the anti-gubermint crowd by emphasizing the criminal organization definition of Uber.
(YEAH! Fuck you Holland and your German laws! You don't get to decide what constitutes a legal definition of a criminal organization in your country!).
Then get the pro-regulation crowd by insinuating that paying taxes, tariffs etc. and submitting to regulation is somehow just a legal racket by "the authorities".
(YEAH! Fuck you regulatory gubermint bodies! I WANT to live in a Blade Runner-like dystopia. Minus the tech, replicants, flying cars, Vangelis soundtrack and unicorns.)
It's almost as if both the "anonymous reader" and Soulskill love watching their mom being double-teamed so much they just can't get the idea of getting it both ways out of their head.
What? It's a flamebait story and topic.
Decorum and protocol dictate the mention of management's and submitters Nazi whore mothers.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
We've all been through it - can't get a cab. It's sometime AM, you need a cab and the driver refuses to take you. From my understanding of 'Common Carrier' law it is illegal for them to refuse a fare, just as much as it is illegal for Uber to operate.
Taxi operations are used to having all of the power and now that Uber has come along (despite some minor reservations I have with the service) I'm glad they are kicking the Taxi industries ass. I've noticed that now Taxis have improved their service because Uber is here.
I suspect that once Uber is gone - Taxi services will become much worse. If Uber is going to be banned then I would like to see the penalties for the Taxi industry increase because if they did what they were supposed to do, then Uber would not exist.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
Lol! I've missed planes several times because taxi companies were not able to provide transportation, even though I arranged it well in advance. And they are not responsible for anything - after all, what are you going to do?
Government has been struggling and failing miserably to organize taxi's in a decent way for so long. Now a great way to organize comes along and what do they do? Makes you think all that struggling was just to sell taxi licenses. The best solution would obviously be to buyback all the licenses and let everybody work through an Uber-like system. But that would cost money...
Thank you, Bradley Manning, Edward Snowden and so many others, for courageously defending humanity, my freedom and more!
Mostly, the 'taxiwet' (cab law) was instated as a quality assurance mechanism. A way to ensure that a driver actualy knew his way around town and wouldn't (at least inadvertently) rip off his passengers. Currently, the law is being changed to allow for companies like Uber to compete effectively, but there's still a prequisite for drivers to hand over a 'VOG', which is wat for an employer to check if a (possibly future) employee has broken any laws in their field in the past, it costs a whooping 25 euro's and can only be requested by the individual themselves as a security measure.Taxi drivers also need to pass a competencytest, something Uber has stated that they would do, but has been trying to circumvent ever since by running a 'darknet' version of Uber limiting the people who could actualy use it to avoid being caught circumventing this requirement.
--- Sometimes even music cannot substitute for tears. --Paul Simon, Cool Cool River
Actually the Dutch taxi market is pretty open nowadays, with several thousand not affiliated taxis in Amsterdam only. But the Netherlands is a pretty regulated country. For driving a taxi for example you need a license (easily obtainable) and there are fixed tariff regulations. Obviously Uber drivers have no such license and don't comply with the tariff regulation. I don't know any democratic nation where an organization which actively organizes and supports activities which don't comply with the law is not seen as a criminal organization.
Doesn't mean that Uber won't be seen as a kind of emancipationary club somewhere down the line. But now...
ARM?
Huh?
Both private hire cars and black cabs are required to display an ID number for exactly the same reasons. A complaint can get their license suspended.
It's just easier to do it to an Uber because you can do it right from the app.
> Rates are fair
The rates for standard taxis are strictly regulated and controlled. Uber rates vary when Uber thinks they should (e.g. surge pricing during tube strikes).
People on slashdot go all moist about Uber because they love the technology it uses. They don't care that Uber also ignores all the laws put there to protect passengers and drivers.
The solution is for proper taxi firms to use the same technology. It's not unusual for the established organisations to be slow off the mark on these things, and for an upstart new-entrant to make the running. If Uber was just adding tech to the business that would be great, but they also decided to break the regulations that are there for good reason. And why are they doing that? Not for anyone else's benefit. But because it's cheaper and easier for them to pretend the rules don't apply to them.
Uber cars ... don't try to cheat you at every step.
Right....
http://justanotherpointstravel...
All I want is a secure system where it's easy to do anything I want. Is that too much to ask ~~ Randall Munroe
I'm European, specifically a Finn. I've never had taxi miss a reserved time. Their responsibility if they do is in fact written into the law, and I have a right under customer protection legislation to demand recompense if they clearly accepted the order.
Of course, around here taxi companies are considered part of public transit infrastructure, and are also tasked with things like driving children in sparsely populated rural areas to schools, ferrying elderly and disabled and so on. They're expensive, but you get the quality you pay for.
I suspect the reason why you have these complaints is because there isn't enough regulation on taxi services in your country.
Problem with VW, is that it doesn't play by European rules either. No shiny knight BS here. It's going to get nailed for its shenanigans in Europe just as much as it will in US.
Here in Finland, customer protection laws are so strong that they may require VW to actually buy relevant cars back from customers if they cannot provide appropriate compensation.
jcr, you're a regular poster as am I, you're a level headed guy, but as an ex taxi driver I have to say you have your head up your arse on this one.
IMO Uber are the worst kind of rent seeker, the kind that prey on people who are desperate enough to sign up as a driver. Uber's over-inflated "market value" has to collapse because at some point the "market" will become bored with the legal battles over 'freedom' and want a real ROI. I don't have any pity for the investors, just the honest drivers who go in with a reliable car and no money, and come out a year or two later with an unroadworthy clunker, and still no money.
If you think I'm exaggerating, the oldest taxi I ever drove was 5yrs off the showroom floor, it had 1.1 million kilometers on the clock, only the body work was original, even the seat sliders had been replaced at least once. Unless the Uber driver is also a mechanic, it would be cheaper for them to buy a 'runout-model' used car once a year. Most taxi's are a one man / one car operations, they lease/rent it to another regular driver or two to keep it on the road 24X7, and buying a 'new' car once every year or so is how they handle the entropy problem. They don't earn a lot of money, the 'plates' (medallion in the US) is the taxi owner's superannuation. The "hidden costs" are the reason Uber refuses to play by the rules, driving a cab doesn't pay enough to satisfy them so they insert themselves in the middle, they even "generously" offer to pay the drivers fines while at the same time offloading all the real costs onto the poor sap.
Also they are not a 'taxi' company as they would like you to think, in most places they are a traditional 'limo' company using sub-contractors, fuck me they were around when I was driving in the 80's, nobody had heard of the internet but we did have phones. Limos can't be flagged down, nor can they use taxi rank infrastructure. Using sub-contractors and ordering it on a computer is hardly revolutionary, so it's not the regulations that are broken, it's Uber's business model. For good reasons it was illegal before the internet was born, "on a computer" doesn't change that.
Again, I'm genuinely surprised you have swallowed Uber's 'hipster' marketing.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
No one is outlawing Uber. That is a false allegation. Uber is, and always has been, an illegal service. They knowingly and willingly disregarded the laws applying to pretty much every aspect of their business, and now are playing the unjustly persecuted role because those laws are being enforced after repeated warnings that they would be.
Everybody knows what they are getting and that the usual "protections" from a government-licensed taxi service don't apply.
Really? I don't believe this to be true, and your argument from this point on fails because of it. Everyone doesn't know that they are not getting the protection of a licensed taxi. Maybe they don't know anything about Uber other than it provides what they understand to be taxis. Maybe their friend ordered the car and they think they're getting in a taxi?
And there are many regulations that people are legally not allowed to "opt out" of. For instance, I'm sure that many would be happy to build their house without following building regulations. Much cheaper. But they're not given that option. Many would be happy to accept a supply of gas from an unregulated supplier. All those rules add to the cost, and if you're prepared to accept the risks why not? Except the law is sometimes there to protect people from their own folly.
For those of you on slashdot who would have the audacity to not be familiar with how things in America are:
1) 3/4 of Americans have probably never ridden in a Taxi. Unless you live in one of a handful of major metropolitan areas chances are you have never used a taxi service. Most American cities do not have Taxi stands, if they have one it is at the airport, this is in part because most American cities have virtually no pedestrians, other than those Other people. Taxis in most American cities are highly unreliable and one cannot simply hail a Taxi.
2) 3/4 of Americans do not use any form of public transportation. With very few exceptions American cities have the worst public transit accommodations in the civilized world. 200 of 330 million Americans do not live within 50 miles of passenger train service, and if you count frequent passenger train service access you can bump that number up to 250 million people. Less than 50 million people live in cities which have subways, trams or trolleys. Public transportation is the city bus, and those are only for those Other people.
3) The vast majority of Americans rarely walk anywhere except to and from their cars, except for the occasional walk in a park. Housing is situated such that there are no local businesses and one must compete with 6 and 8 lane wide intersections, and god forbid you ever try to make use of pedestrian crossing light/zone. Most residential areas built in last 30 years don't even have sidewalks, zero public transportation, and no bike routes.
4) Those Other people are not "real Americans"(TM). They are inner city urban dwellers, they are poor, don't have cars, or money for gas or insurance and must walk ungodly amounts in maintenance of their daily lives. The only europeans who have have ever walked as much as those Other people are people who have gone on pilgrimages.
"Real Americans"(TM) have cars, live in the suburbs and have a deep abiding disdain for any and everything public. Luckily the under 35 group is starting to challenge some of what has been described here, and perhaps before I die, they will actually change things.
America, land of the free, home of the brave, where sociopathy is more than just a way of life.