
Uber hit by legal setback in Europe - Tomte
http://money.cnn.com/2017/05/11/technology/uber-not-tech-company-europe-court/index.html
======
bpodgursky
As much as you guys love to hate on Uber, do you honestly want to go back to a
world without it?

Just in case it isn't clear, Uber is just the easy whipping boy because of bad
PR -- the legal hurdles Uber is going through will crush Lyft just as quickly
(probably faster because they have a smaller legal team).

Taxi unions aren't going to say "oh, but Lyft doesn't have as much sexual
harassment in the workplace, we'll let them slide."

This is a reactionary kick by a protected industry, but if the legal framework
ends up crushing hail-to-ride companies, those laws aren't going anywhere for
a long, long time.

The change will only happen if it's not-explicitly-illegal and people are able
to use the service to see the value; if one of those stops, we're going back
to unavailable, dirty, unsafe, cabs with perpetually broken credit card
readers.

~~~
TeMPOraL
> _As much as you guys love to hate on Uber, do you honestly want to go back
> to a world without it?_

As an European? Yes.

Things were evolving fine in Europe; from our POV, Uber isn't doing anything
innovative - they're just a personal transportation company (we have those)
with a cute app (we have those) that tries to outcompete everyone by
unilaterally deciding that laws don't apply to them.

> _Taxi unions aren 't going to say "oh, but Lyft doesn't have as much sexual
> harassment in the workplace, we'll let them slide."_

I wish this would stop; I get that sexual harassment is what media loves to
write about, but this was not remotely the biggest or most wrong thing Uber
has done. Their whole business model is antisocial.

~~~
lukeholder
Business models need to be "social" now?

~~~
Tomte
Yes, indeed. The German constitution clearly states

"Property entails obligations. Its use shall also serve the public good."

([https://www.gesetze-im-
internet.de/englisch_gg/englisch_gg.h...](https://www.gesetze-im-
internet.de/englisch_gg/englisch_gg.html#p0085))

~~~
gnicholas
This is very interesting. What are the limits on this?

The prior sentence refers to inheritance, so it's clearly about personal
property also (if not exclusively). But if someone inherits a Porsche, in what
way is it supposed to serve the public good?

Also, the following sentence discusses expropriation (which appears to be what
is known in the US as eminent domain). And the title of the section is
"Property — Inheritance — Expropriation".

I wonder if this means this section (including the intriguing sentence you
quoted) is just talking about rules for inheriting and expropriating property.
That is, perhaps it's not a general rule for property to serve the public good
(just that it may be called to do so in cases of expropriation).

I would be very interested to know how other people interpret this sentence
and the section in which it's found.

~~~
Tomte
The article is number 14, so it's a basic right – articles 1 through 19 – we
open our constitution with our rights, we don't add them as an afterthought in
some amendments. ;-)

So paragraph 1 guarantees property and inheritance. And makes both subject to
limitations, set out by law (freedom of art, for example, is not limited by
laws, at least not literally in the text of the constitution).

Paragraph 2 lays out one such limitation: social benefit.

Paragraph 3 lays out a means to achieve that: expropriation (exceedingly rare,
I think it is sometimes used for huge infrastructure projects like Autobahnen
or railroad tracks, but only after years of negotiations).

So it is indeed a general rule, not a detail to expropriation.

To your question about the limits on paragraph 2 let me just throw in a bit
from the German Wikipedia, without having checked it:

* Not all property is subject to this limit to the basic right to property, but only such property that has "social relevance"

I would interpret it so that apartments and housing are clearly having social
relevance, but your Porsche probably hasn't.

Furthermore:

* Those limitations to the basic right to property must be rooted in fomal law, not just regulations or jurisprudence.

~~~
gnicholas
Super helpful, especially the "social relevance" limitation. Thanks!

------
maxsilver
If by "major legal setback" you mean "was correctly categorized as the thing
they are".

It's always been ridiculous to me that America lets companies self-opt-out of
the rules and laws, just because they feel like it.

~~~
leijurv
Even if it's correct, it's still a setback for the company.

------
chollida1
From another news source, this has knock on effects for VAT..

> As a supplier of a transport service, Uber may be liable for value-added-
> tax, or VAT, imposed on businesses that supply goods and services.

I can't imagine the stress, even if alot of it is self induced, that the
company is under right now. You have to feel some level of empathy for the
company's employees.

Most of them probably came from other well paying jobs and were already
counting their option payouts int heir heads.

It's easily conceivable at this point that Uber could IPO well under its $50+
billion private valuation.

Top things I would do even though I'm wildly unqualified to give Travis
advice..........

1) Drop self driving cars completely. YOu aren't getting there first, second,
or anywhere close to third, just partner with a car company and call it a day.

2) Settle Google's lawsuit, hopefully 1 will help

3) Hire a new CEO, Sheryl Sandberg is almost certainly not available but
someone who can show that change will and is happening internally.

~~~
mbesto
> 1) Drop self driving cars completely. YOu aren't getting there first,
> second, or anywhere close to third, just partner with a car company and call
> it a day.

You realize that it's literally impossible to become profitable if they don't
have self driving cars, right?

~~~
vidarh
There are plenty of profitable companies providing taxi services you can order
via an app

~~~
TeMPOraL
Not Uber, however. They seem to be either betting on the self-driving to pull
them out of the borrowing hole, or at least they use it to make VCs keep
giving them money they use to subsidize their rides.

------
ithinkinstereo
Somewhat misleading title. This is just a non-binding opinion; the court has
yet to make a final (binding) ruling.

That said, there is a high chance that the court sides with the opinion. From
the article:

> A final decision in the case is expected before the end of the year. While
> guidance from the Advocate General is not binding, the court typically rules
> in similar fashion.

------
alkonaut
Taxi company considered taxi company. Full news at 11.

------
ilanco
Uber has hugely optimized the way I get from place to place. The only thing I
need is a phone and there is no messing around with cash. While I don't agree
with all their policies (like a 30% tax on drivers), their user experience is
several orders of magnitude better than a normal Taxi. I'm currently in Costa
Rica and the drivers are always friendly and courteous. They usually have
new(er) cars and are happy to offer you some candy or change the radio station
to your liking. None of that has ever happened in a Taxi. In the long run,
Uber's business model is to get rid of the drivers and operate self-driving
cars. I think we are close to that day, they just need to survive until then.

------
rdiddly
Robert Pirsig's recent death reminded me to read, much-belatedly, Zen and the
Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. One of its central tenets is that the highest
good, or highest Quality, in technology, results from an integrative approach
where the worker doesn't separate from the work, but rather identifies with it
and becomes one with it. (A prerequisite for this is an awareness of Quality
that is largely precluded/prevented by the usual rational/analytic view of
reality that we normally associate with technology, but anyway...)

So here you have Uber, which has always been in the business of ferrying
people around, but tries hard to separate itself from the business of ferrying
people around. "We're not a transportation company, we're an app." "They're
not employees of Uber, they're contractors." "They're not taxis, it's ride-
sharing." "Uber's not liable for this tax, the driver is." It's not us, we're
not the ones, we're not doing it, we're not involved, we're not responsible.
The ultimate schism between the doer and the act. They're not exactly rushing
forward to integrate the whole system under a unifying banner of Quality, are
they?

If anything they're the epitome of the rationalist/analytic view of reality
complete with all its schisms, all of which results in the kind of drab
ugliness (on the human end mostly) that makes people want to shoot themselves
in the face. Ugliness (poor quality) papered over with cheap stylistic
embellishments that make it "not just depressingly dull, [but] also phony."

------
fuscy
Pardon my ignorance as I couldn't find a lot of information on this but if
Uber became a transportation company wouldn't that require full-time contracts
for all the drivers that would use the application? This seems quite
restricting as the purpose of the app is to allow anyone to join the platform
and for the driver to drive only when he feels like it.

Forcing licenses doesn't restrict the number of possible drivers? In my
country most licenses are held by cartels who don't let any new incumbents in
the market.

Also there are some who don't want to be taxi drivers but just do this in off
time in the weekends. In my country people that drive for Uber need to have
either a juridic registration either as a company or as an authorized person
and since Uber has forced online transactions, predetermined pay and a review
system, the tax evasion is nonexistent, there is no pay cheating and the
drivers behave (as opposed to the taxi drivers who due to cash transactions do
a lot of tax evasion, temper with the registering devices and don't care about
customer feedback even refusing rides based on tipping).

I hope that if the legislation changes then it also brings the old system to
the 21st century.

~~~
detaro
That would entirely depend on the local laws, but I don't think requiring
companies to have full-time contracts would be a common rule – a
transportation company still should be able to use contractors. (E.g. I'm
pretty sure my local bus company occasionally hires a driver for just a day or
two)

This here would be primarily clarifying that Uber is the one offering the
service, fulfilling it using contractors, and can't claim that the contractor
is directly offering to the passenger, and they just provide a place for the
two to find each other.

If that "transportation service" is covered by local laws about Taxis/cars-
for-hire/... is not something discussed at this level (and if the answer is
yes, then if it is in compliance with them), as far as I understand. The ECJ
was asked to clarify on the platform-vs-service-provider point, not the local
issue of what specific kind of provider they are and what rules apply to them.

------
Grue3
What is this guy's opinion on BlaBlaCar? It's been quite popular in Europe for
a while now. Is Uber being legally challenged only because it directly
competes with taxis while BlaBlaCar doesn't?

~~~
user15672
BlaBlaCar seems to be a service to link people going somewhere with other
people who happen to be driving to the same place and have space in their
vehicle.

It doesn't look on demand, or anything really like a taxi service, so it's
quite unlike Uber or other taxi services.

------
spikels
Freakonomics radio just broadcast an episode on Uber (and self-driving
vehicles) last week. Pretty interesting analysis of the impact of Uber from an
economic perspective.

[http://freakonomics.com/podcast/the-most-dangerous-
machine/](http://freakonomics.com/podcast/the-most-dangerous-machine/)

Note: This is a rehash of 2 earlier podcasts.

------
suavesav
'non-binding opinion'

This is speculation, not news.

~~~
tom_mellior
Semi-true, as the ECJ tends to follow the Advocate General's opinion. So that
opinion is, in fact, somewhat newsworthy.

------
maverick_iceman
This is why Europe will never be able to catch up to America when it comes to
tech.

~~~
chrisper
Maybe. But at least we don't have Politicans who say that people won't die if
they don't have access to health care [1].

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/wp/2017/05/06/...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/wp/2017/05/06/nobody-
dies-because-they-dont-have-access-to-health-care-gop-lawmaker-says-he-got-
booed/)

------
anigbrowl
I already live in a world without Uber, like most people who use public
transit. I've used it a few times when I've been with other people, it's near
but it's hardly the new foundation of society. If the whole firm was suddenly
wiped out by a disease contracted form a dirty telephone the world would keep
turning just fine.

 _Just in case it isn 't clear, Uber is just the easy whipping boy because of
bad PR_

Umm, no. I defended Uber in its early days against the unethical actors int he
taxi industry, and it would be hypocritical of me to ignore Uber's own
apparent lack of ethics.

Your parade of horribles is manipulative, to put it mildly. I can't help
wondering to what extent you're financially rather than just emotionally
invested in the firm.

~~~
dang
> _I can 't help wondering to what extent you're financially_

Your comments have become increasingly uncivil lately. Would you please fix
that? This one, in particular, crosses a line into personal attack that's not
allowed. Surely you've seen one of my bazillion comments about this:
[https://hn.algolia.com/?query=by:dang%20astroturf&sort=byDat...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=by:dang%20astroturf&sort=byDate&prefix=true&page=0&dateRange=all&type=comment).

We detached this comment from
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14317517](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14317517)
and marked it off-topic.

~~~
anigbrowl
Why is it uncivil to ask whether someone might have a financial interest in an
outcome? It's a common enough situation, and I think an entirely reasonable
response to hyperbole.

One of pg's most famous essays, The submarine, identifies the phenomenon of
apparently disinterested reportage or commentary actually being engineered by
those who are commercially interested in a particular point of view gaining
popularity.

I reject your claim of incivility and stand by the legitimacy of my inquiry. I
have always made a point of preemptively declaring an interest or lack of same
when it appeared my comments might be read as advocacy on behalf of a specific
firm.

Since you've detached this from the discussion I'm going to go ahead and say
that I am having increasing doubts about your neutrality as a moderator.

~~~
tptacek
Just for what it's worth, I think that essay did more damage to discussions on
HN than pretty much anything else he's written:

[https://hn.algolia.com/?query=http:%2F%2Fwww.paulgraham.com%...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=http:%2F%2Fwww.paulgraham.com%2Fsubmarine.html&sort=byDate&prefix&page=0&dateRange=all&type=comment)

In the overwhelming majority of the cases it's cited, it's used mostly to suck
the oxygen out of a discussion, so that rather than discussing the merits of
an argument, we're instead required to first resolve the motives of the people
making the argument.

I think you should keep declaring your interests in controversies! That's a
good thing. I try to do that too. But I'm sure you've seen instances on HN of
people litigating this issue and it making for stupid, angry, pointless flame
wars. Even if you're very careful about when you deploy this challenge, the
rules have to work for the median HN commenter, not just the super careful
ones.

 _Shortly afterwards_ :

I also think Dan is letting the perfect be the enemy of the good by not
updating the guidelines to say this directly and announcing the change --- I
know that's because they have bigger plans for the guidelines, but it would
save everyone some time to make this incremental change anyways.

------
homakov
EU, where millions of hours go into accepting cookies popups - says it all
about EU legal system.

~~~
TeMPOraL
You only spend time and money on making a cookie popup if you're tracking your
users with third-party analytics. I.e. a minor inconvenience if you're fucking
your users by funneling their data into the adtech industry. So while the
particular implementation may suck, I generally like EU's approach to privacy
and data protection.

~~~
MichaelGG
He said accepting. The amount of time that goes into adding the cookie popup
is minor compared to the time each user has to waste on it, in aggregate.

Has the law actually reduced the usage of third party tracking?

~~~
TeMPOraL
Fair enough. The actual implementation of the law really, really sucks - it's
a waste with little effect on anything (except training every user to
unconsciously dismiss yet another popup).

~~~
homakov
That's what I said. We judge laws not by their intention, but on the outcome.
Outcome of cookie law is one giant net negative.

------
rdslw
And I say NO to uber, simply because they "taxate" my countrymen with 20..30%
of tax on their work, while UBER itself is paying (if any) taxes in different
(heaven like) jurisdictions and none in my country.

~~~
maverick_iceman
If you don't like Uber don't take Uber.

------
it_learnses
Regardless of whether its classified as a digital service or not, the spirit
of these taxi and even rental laws and hotel laws (applicable to AirBNB) are
grounded in protection of consumers and communities in general. While these
laws need updating in many cases, Uber and AirBNB shouldn't be exempt from
them especially when the price differences being offered by them are only
possible due to them skirting the laws.

For what its worth, they did "disrupt" the economies in question and made the
incumbents appreciate the consumer more, but also profited highly from it. Now
its time to stop the free lunch and even the playing field.

------
MichaelBurge
If Uber weren't paying the drivers, then they would be neither employees nor
contractors but just people using their site.

I wonder if it makes sense to charge the drivers a "listing fee" and somehow
have the transaction happen directly between the rider and driver. It seems
like they'd be further away from being a taxi company if they did that.

Their best bet is for the users to be the one breaking the law: If you fine a
million people you'll just be voted out of office.

I wonder why they even need to "operate" in Europe at all. Local servers
reduce latency, but aren't strictly necessary. I guess there's payment
processing with a local bank, but foreign credit card transactions are a
thing.

~~~
TillE
Courts around the world haven't been especially lenient towards websites and
services which deliberately facilitate the breaking of laws.

~~~
MichaelBurge
What does the court's opinion matter if you don't have any roots in their
country?

