
Uber faces at least five U.S. probes - brakmic
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2017-10-11/uber-pushed-the-limits-of-the-law-now-comes-the-reckoning
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iamcasen
The media's outlook on Uber is always very fascinating to me. At least this
article got things mostly factually correct, but the amount of times that
blatant speculation and rumor have been published about Uber is astounding.

Before UberX, Uber followed all the laws to a tee. This article correctly
points out, that only after lyft and sidecar were flaunting the law and
getting away with it, did Uber decide it must do so as well in order to stay
ahead of the competition.

Laws and regulations about new and innovative technologies and products are a
grey area. While I don't agree with a lot of the shitty tactics Uber employed,
I can say with confidence that 80% of the bad shit written about Uber is
totally false.

In hindsight, Kalanick could have and should have handled things better.
Looking at the regulatory landscape for cryptocurrencies and blockchain tech,
I find myself wishing there was a Kalanick out there pushing for innovation
rather than letting the banks reign everything in and stifle it.

~~~
Buttes
Cmon, tho, they literally built a system to ID cops. It's no wonder people are
giving them shit, even if you forgive it all you have to know its terrible
optics. It's not really _astounding_.

And I don't think the blockchain world is any _any_ way over regulated or
stifled, 5ish years in and its still basically the wild west. Btce was one of
the biggest exchanges until recently, and I doubt whatshisface would have even
been arrested had they not vacationed in greece or w/e. And any random jerkoff
can still make something just like it. Or implement some funny p2p exchange
etc..

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linkregister
Is scraping competitors’ public API’s out of the ordinary for technology
companies? I was under the impression that Wal-Mart/Jet scraped Amazon and
vice versa, similar to how retail chains employ “secret shoppers” to discover
competitors’ prices.

I do remember a case where Craigslist sued a company for scraping its API and
won. I wonder if it is invalidated by Weev’s subsequent acquittal.

They could be apples/oranges since the former is civil while the latter is
criminal. Also, Craigslist was able to demonstrate damages, which were clearly
linked; every visitor to the other company’s page was one that didn’t visit
Craigslist. And there are clear copyright issues with scraping Craigslist and
using that user-generated information to populate another website.

~~~
malandrew
Not only do competitor's do it, but also university and transportation
authority researchers have as well.

Usually scraping is covered under tort law as a trespass to chattels. Since
services have limited capacity, any scraping that imposes an undue amount of
traffic is essentially depriving that entity of using their capacity to serve
legitimate customers.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trespass_to_chattels](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trespass_to_chattels)

Insofar as copyright is concerned, you can't really copyright data, but you
can copyright a collection of data. See Feist v. Rural.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feist_Publications,_Inc.,_v._R...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feist_Publications,_Inc.,_v._Rural_Telephone_Service_Co).

To determine if someone is copying your data wholesale via scraping or some
other method, it's not uncommon for a data provider to include false data that
isn't real. If they see a competitor publishing that data, they can make the
case that the competitor is copying their collection of data, especially if
enough pieces of false data show up. In mapping, these are known as trap
streets.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trap_street](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trap_street)

~~~
linkregister
Ha! I love the idea of trap streets. From the wikipedia article, it appears
that they're not protected by copyright in the U.S., though they are in the UK
and Singapore.

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tryingagainbro
They might be big enough to get away with an apology.

Obviously their business model was against the law as taxis are virtually
everywhere regulated and then they are tax related issues regarding employee
/contractors etc. A _typical_ Harvard MBA would not have stated Uber.

I have a feeling that they made it...new CEO, plenty of cash, and a
willingness to issue e thousand apologies and /or settlements.

