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Italy Bans Uber (thenextweb.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Next Web: A court just banned Uber from using its apps in Italy -- yes, all of Italy. The court ruled in favor of the country's taxi drivers -- who filed the suit -- claiming Uber was "unfair competition." Now Uber can't use it's apps -- including UberBlack, Uber LUX, X, and Select -- and it can't promote or advertise itself at all within the country. For all intents and purposes, Uber is banned in Italy.
In the US Uber seems to have evolved into a "Date-Rape On Wheels" service.
No doubt more so in India given the cultural acceptance of rape as normal behavior!
Italy wins!
Ha ha
but that can't ban the l0de radio hour!
https://www.twitch.tv/l0de
really niggas only! GNAA 4 LYFE!
While this is a good news for everyone that consider Uber is evil, this is not final victory: they will appeal.
The case is likely to bubble up to the EU Justice Court.
If I open a buggy whip factory, can we shut down the taxi drivers until they switch back to horses?
Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.
No means no in the personal space, but most of the big Internet companies were built on breaking the rules: Google and YouTube were built on copyright infringement, Facebook was built on privacy violations, Uber and Airbnb respectively ignore local transport and accommodation laws, PayPal violated credit card company agreements, Amazon aggressively imposes patents and parity-pricing agreements, and Snapchat has thrived from illicit activity by children, not to mention all those boosted to critical mass through illegal spam.
But once established, it's both feasible and desirable to show a kinder front.
"Now Uber can't use it's apps."
so sad!
Can Uber license Prince's "symbol" for use in Italy?
yes fun with puns
Communism uber alles.
I don't know if Italy has the power to ban an app. Maybe on IOS if Apple is willing to play ball. But they can't ban a web app. Not easily anyway.
So they think Uber is banned in Italy?
All this does is opens a path for someone to make an app that connects using a VPN to a server in another country beyond Italy's jurisdiction, which in turn contacts using another VPN to people driving cars to share their space in with someone IN Italy, a la Uber. Perhaps it will be called "Unter". As in "Unter dem Tisch," or "under the table," because money is there to be made, someone will make it, and they won't let a piddling little thing like some Mickey Mouse Italian Court stop them.
Just saying.
But... have people actually stopped using Uber in Italy? After all, lots of things are banned in a lot of places. Porn. Prostitution. Drugs. Gambling. And yet...
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
They break the last vestiges of the social contract between the Capitalists and Workers. Take that away and what's left of the system will break. I don't expect any good to come of that though, it didn't in China and the USSR.
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to the convenience and stability of the big CC companies. You'd be amazed just how much they do for business and consumer alike.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Absolutely astonishing to watch the deluge if bile whenever Uber is mentioned, and so clearly unfounded. Over the years, I've used their services in 6 European countries, never a single issue. Personal friends told me they got past temporary financial issues by working for them for a couple months, none of them recounted any horror stories except amazingly enough for hostility from taxi drivers. I even watch the bloody CEO arguing with driver video and think he stayed polite and curteous for as long as possible. Again, astonishing.. so much irrational hatred for a service that provably helps people
Italy laws for taxi drivers are quite lenient to the point where the form a small cartel.
They are exempt from giving a receipt. They need to be organized in special companies/unions.
But the problem with Uber is also that the current insurances do not cover you and your
passengers with the normal licenses, which cost much more than that for a personal car.
So yeah, it is unfair competition, as Uber is essentially a taxi service that does not play by the rules.
Whether the rules are correct or not is an other matter, though.
The Italian economy is in bad shape for a reason.
Ironically, on my last trip to Italy, the only person who ripped us off is a taxi driver.
JP http://www.wearerite.com
When Italy gets a clue as to what Uber can really offer they will embrace Uber and beg them to enter their nation.
With all the underhanded unethical stuff Uber has been doing; I wish they'd ban them in the US as well. They've already been caught defrauding customers and figuring out ways to prevent detection by officials in areas they're not supposed to be operating in. Their drivers have nasty habits of being racist or discriminatory. Italian taxi drivers may have their own issues; but Uber is just as bad.
It really depends on the metrics that you use to claim that a country's economy is in "bad shape". Surely if you only look at GDP growth it might look like that. But GDP growth only measures the variation "annual income", it doesn't tell you how much money people actually have in their bank account, stocks, or in real estate investments. What if I told you that Italians are actually the fifth richest people on the planet, with a median per-capita net wealth that is almost three times as much as that of US citizens?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
I knew the community here on slashdot was pretty closeminded, but never did I think people would be cheering on less competition in the Italian taxi market. Uber is fucking great for consumers and they treat employees better than taxi companies. Taxi organizations want a strangle-hold on the market and live in the past, how the fuck do you all not see that?
It turns out Uber was banned all along. It was never legal. The court didn't ban it; it ruled that current law prohibits Uber's operations.
There are really only two views here:
1. A society is game pool where successful individuals/clans get to feed on the less successful ones ("I want my cheap ride and I don't care if it creates subclass of precarious serfs sleeping in cars with broken dreams and no families")
2. A society is a collective enterprise with goal to move all towards progress ("Brilliant middlemen need to be taxed so that the less brilliant ones get food, shelter, education and social security")
I prefer #2, as historically such societies achieve more for all. If America was great, it was great in the first 2/3rds of the 20th century, when taxes were high and lower classes got to see colleges and universities. That is the only social capilal that America had, and it should better start to accumulate a new one, as the existing is pretty much gone.
What noise does a Fiat make when it gets a flat tire?
For all intents and purposes, Uber is banned in Italy.
All major surveys show that Uber has steadily declined in market share. Uber is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If Uber is to survive at all it will be among car sharing dilettante dabblers. Uber continues to decay. Nothing short of a cockeyed miracle could save Uber from its fate at this point in time. For all practical purposes, Uber is dead.
You miss his point. Or perhaps not, but were so offended by his inference that's you responded in the moronic manner of the someone who feels inadequate in some way. You response is a longer version of the childish classic, "Yeah, well my daddy is bigger and can beat your daddy up, so there! Nyah!"
His comment was qualitative, your counter was quantitative and irrelevant. Grow up.
Well If the country of Italy follows this pattern, they are going to be a dinghy backwater. What happens when the issue of driver less cars come to their front door? Are they going to ban those and along with banning them condemn the automobile companies in their country to extinction? What happens in Italy when there are so many cars (the numbers per 1000 grow every year) that they must consider an alternative that includes using an app to 'hire' a car that fits the immediate need from a tiny single-seater to a big moving van. Uber is just one manifestation of this digital transformation and the youngest generations are driving the adoption at a very rapid pace. Italy will have to succumb to it or it too will pass away into extinction. Once autonomous cars hit the streets in a big way (likley by 2020), Italy will have to relent and allow companies like Uber to operate ... if for no other reason than to make the streets safer. Hmm, I wonder who is working on autonomous Gondolas....