
California deems carpooling via all ride-share services illegal - taytus
http://www.cnet.com/news/california-deems-all-ride-share-carpooling-services-illegal/
======
kyro
Reading things like this make me OK with startups bending an even breaking the
occasional law if they're truly providing something of value. The legal system
is rife with regulations and actors that are often not intended to benefit the
public. There is nothing inherently right or efficient about it, and it's the
oldest and most inflexible of the man-made institutions, behind Comcast.

~~~
bowlofpetunias
Organizations deliberately breaking the law for profit is generally called
"organized crime".

Drug dealers provide something of value and personally I think we would be way
better off if drugs were legalized. So we're going to call our local drugs-
gangs "disruptive startups" now?

90% procent of the time these companies are simply breaking privacy, consumer
protection and labor laws for one reason and one reason only: greed. So
occasionally they may stumble upon a law that actually needs reform. Even a
broken clock is right twice per day.

That doesn't make me okay with OK with breaking the law as a business
strategy, especially since most of the time it isn't the Comcasts of this
world that suffer the consequences, but individual workers and consumers.

This Robin Hood worship is pathetic. These startups are not making the world a
better place.

~~~
DanielBMarkham
>> Organizations deliberately breaking the law for profit is generally called
"organized crime".

You know, I actually agree with you, by the definitions of things we have in
place today, that is, in fact, organized crime. And since most people violate
three laws a day, and we use various corporate affiliations to do it, it would
follow that we are all members of a vast organized crime syndicate.

Going to need some bigger prisons.

------
patcon
Somebody please create a p2p ridesharing network and let's be done with the
regulatory theater and jockeying of overvalued companies

~~~
adamjs
As much as I love the idea of true peer-to-peer decentralized marketplace,
it's a pipe-dream and I'll explain why.

\- Every node is potentially untrustworthy therefore additional verification
must be performed on the results of any query. To verify a piece of
information, a "paper trail" must be transmitted as well (who created what
when).

\- This overhead causes information to move much more slowly in a system (if
at all, if the threshold is set too high it's possible for all queries to
fail).

\- To counter this cost, each node can build its own map of trusted nodes
based on the validity of previous information. This "network of trust" can be
used to throttle the amount of verification performed.

\- To illustrate, let's take what happens if you're totally new to a fully
decentralized ridesharing platform. You start off not knowing any of the other
users (nodes) and so you select a few at random (trusting all mutually),
perform a query on all nodes and select the driver with the best rating
(according to popular rating from those few users). You take a ride from that
driver, have an awful experience, and therefore don't trust the ratings shared
by those users anymore. You're back to square one. Building trust takes a lot
of time and first-hand validation.

\- There's potential for trusted nodes to turn "bad" (untrustworthy) therefore
each node must continuously "police" neighboring nodes and relay any changes
in behavior to mutually-trusted nodes.

\- What's more, there is a certain "cost of competition" that comes with truly
decentralized systems. You cannot roll out "system-wide" changes as easily as
a centralized one since a majority of the system must first agree (and many
times that majority is too small to even consider it a consensus, which ends
in grid-lock).

\- These five costs (paper-trail, verification, building network of trust,
policing network of trust, cost of competition) makes the overall performance
of a distributed platform very inferior to that of a centralized platform like
Uber.

\- Of course there are downsides to centralized platforms like Uber. The
quality of ratings is less trustworthy since all users use separate criteria
(and could be untrustworthy Lyft proponents). Also, Uber (as a system) does
not make decisions in the best interest of its users and is only kept in check
by its competition (which is diminishing each day).

\- You can look to human civilization as a way to illustrate some of the
challenges and solutions of purely decentralized systems. It would be pretty
hard to survive if everyone didn't trust anyone outside of himself. We built
our own networks of trust via our family and friends (our tribe). As human
populations grew, so too did competition between tribes. Centralized
governments and services were then built to offset some of our individual
responsibilities and promote unimpeded, fair flow of certain resources while
still preserving those aspects that benefit the most from decentralization.

\- These hybrid systems (platforms with both decentralized AND centralized
aspects) work the best in the real world as long as those centralized parts
keep working for the majority of nodes and a healthy balance of
decentralized/centralized is maintained. (You'll notice we struggle with both
of those caveats today in modern civilization).

Whoo! Sorry for the long-winded post, I have a lot more to say on the subject
but I'll save the rest for a blog post :). (I'm working on decentralized
authority and identification in my spare time so this is a hot area of
research for me!).

~~~
lxmorj
Let's say you require each user to use a valid credit card that matches their
name and billing address to verify their unique identity. Then you implement
the same star rating system as Uber for both drivers and riders. Then you let
driver's set their mile and time rates. When I request a ride, the system
gives me a list of time-to-arrival, mileage, and wait time charges. I pick the
one I want.

It does seem like that would not require an overseers anymore than Bitcoin
does.

What am I missing?

~~~
adamjs

       When I request a ride, the _system_ gives me...
    

To explain what you're missing, I have to talk about how decentralized
networks are actually implemented.

Think of the "system" as a large crowd of people in a room. Only certain
people in the room have the information you want. It is totally unfeasible to
ask every person in the room, you can only ask the three guys closest to you.

What do you do?

The best strategy to maximize query performance mimics the real-world— each
person occasionally gossips information to each other, which replicates data
across a network and increases the chance that someone nearby will have the
answer you seek.

The problem then comes down to trust-- say you ask three guys nearby a
question: "Do you know if there are any cabs nearby?"

Let's say those three guys did happen to know of a cab nearby but wanted it
for themselves (they just got an invite to this AWESOME party in the Haight),
so they lie to you and take the cab for themselves.

Or, in an alternative case— they are all three sons of a rather horrible cab
driver and tell you that he is the ONLY one available.

If we had a global view of the system, the chances of this abuse might be
minimized but this is just not feasible in real-world implementations.

There's also other implications for privacy (nodes in the middle might log
your queries) which might also introduce new vectors for abuse.

~~~
jacquesm
You could dump your ratings in the bitcoin blockchain. Decentralized, hard to
forge, automatically archived in lots of places and outside of centralized
control.

Thinking about it this way, the real value of bitcoin might not be in the
coins but in the blockchain itself.

It's essentially a write-only log that you can append to by paying a minimal
fee.

~~~
adamjs
I wrote earlier that information must be transmitted with a "paper-trail" for
it to be independently verifiable by every node. The bitcoin block chain is
essentially a single, massive "paper-trail" that could potentially be used
like a shared database for synchronizing information across nodes.

Using the block chain as a single, shared, decentralized database is an
interesting solution but has serious flaws when used as you describe:

1\. Transactions are not added immediately (and by added, I mean a consensus
has been reached by a majority of the network on the state of the block
chain), it can take up to 10 minutes for confirmation to be reached [1] with
modern networks and hardware.

2\. Each transaction increases the size of the block chain. To independently
verify a transaction, each node must have a complete copy of the block chain
which is about 21 GB today [2], and growing ~1 GB per month. This rate is
expected to increase with time which presents one of the biggest flaws of
Bitcoin today. Several strategies exist to reduce the size (pruning of the
data, using lightweight clients that only store headers instead of full data)
but all of these reduce the ability for an individual node to verify a
transaction.

3\. Transactions can fail for various reasons: data is too large, transaction
fee too low, fork in the blockchain, orphaned blocks, etc. What's even worse
is that you won't know (and can't try submitting the transaction again) until
confirmation fails ~10 minutes later.

4\. Transactions fees for storing arbitrary data in the block chain is
dependent upon the real-world price of bitcoin. What's more, once the block
reward approaches zero (the reward is cut in half approx. every four years)
the rewards of mining will shift entirely to voluntary transaction fees. This
will likely cause transaction fees to increase.

5\. The block chain is only secure as long as there doesn't exist a single
group with a majority of processing power (it is kept in check by competition
between miners). If a monopoly develops it can abuse the system very readily.

These various reasons (latency, size, failure, fee increases over time) make
the block chain a pretty bad back-end for the implementation of a shared,
decentralized database of a real-time P2P app.

The idea isn't completely unsalvageable however, another way of looking at the
problem is to realize that the block chain file itself is used as a shared
resource between many "threads". Each thread has its own local copy but
reconciliation must be performed across all threads to ensure consistent state
(which introduces huge amounts of synchronization and contention).

To parallelize the problem, we must reduce the amount of resource contention
required. The best way to do that is to use separate databases (eg, separate
block chains) for separate, logical clusters of threads. Eg, for a ridesharing
app, you can use a separate database (block chain) for each city. This way,
only the data that is relevant to each thread must be synchronized.

There's a few problems with this approach (could allow local monopolies to
develop more readily) as well but it better emulates natural models for
decentralized systems.

It might also be better to use a hybrid approach based on the type of data
involved:

1\. Use a secure DHT (distributed hash table) to store data that isn't
necessarily transactional (such as individual ratings that could be aggregated
via an unstructured query).

2\. Use a local block chain to synchronize shared resources (such as driver
availability).

[1] [https://blockchain.info/charts/avg-confirmation-
time](https://blockchain.info/charts/avg-confirmation-time)

[2] [https://blockchain.info/charts/blocks-
size?timespan=all](https://blockchain.info/charts/blocks-size?timespan=all)

~~~
jacquesm
I've been discussing the idea out-of-band earlier today and all your remarks
are spot on.

Yet another option: re-design bitcoin in such a way that these problems can be
addressed and then convince miners to adopt that since it will in the long run
result in increased fees for them because of a larger number of 'riders' on
the transactions. This could offset the loss of mined coins and will
effectively allow bitcoin a smoother transition from the 'mining' to the
'transaction' stage, it adds sufficient value to the blockchain that it might
even replace the mined coin reward completely or surpass it before that reward
goes to '0'.

------
lpolovets
Does anyone know why laws like this exist? What's the value of regulating
carpool ride-sharing and single-user ride-sharing, and what's the additional
value of having separate regulations for each.

~~~
saalweachter
This particular law is consumer protection. Taxis are required to charge per
trip, not per passenger. If you are standing on a street corner, hail a cab
and say 'anyone else going uptown?', that is purely between you and the other
passengers, and not between you and the driver.

I suspect that if Uber had a second app, or maybe a second marketplace within
the same app, which matched Uber passengers with each other -- instead of
multiple passengers with a single driver -- it probably would have been legal.

~~~
sergiotapia
You didn't answer the question, "why?".

~~~
edgyswingset
When you take a taxi, you pay a fare, plain and simple. This farce of calling
it ridesharing via an independent contractor with a mobile app that happens to
connect you all is exactly that: a farce. If we want to redefine what a taxi
service is, that's another conversation.

~~~
judk
Super Shuttle is legal, pay per passenger. As are buses.

------
TallGuyShort
Can anyone explain how this is different from services like Super Shuttle? I
get charged an individual fee, but the actual times are subject to other
passengers and that can change at any time.

~~~
greenburger
I suspect because SuperShuttle franchises have different terms for the TCP
permit they carry.

[http://www.cpuc.ca.gov/PUC/transportation/FAQs/psgfaqs.htm](http://www.cpuc.ca.gov/PUC/transportation/FAQs/psgfaqs.htm)

~~~
dragonwriter
Actually, SuperShuttle is a PSC rather than a TCP, and the rule here applies
to TCPs (including TNCs, which are a new subclass of TCPs to which Uber, Lyft,
etc., belong.)

------
saosebastiao
Someone, at some point in time, wrote this law. I would like to know what use
case they had in mind when they decided this was a bad thing.

~~~
ddebernardy
Possibly something written a century ago to thwart jitneys from getting in the
way of public transportation systems:

[http://paleofuture.gizmodo.com/uber-is-currently-fighting-
th...](http://paleofuture.gizmodo.com/uber-is-currently-fighting-the-battle-
that-jitneys-lost-1629552478)

------
tswartz
Frustrating to see another letter from CPUC trying to slow Uber and Lyft down.
How can CPUC deem this a bad thing? Carpooling means less ubers/lyfts on the
road so less traffic and pollution. I've used Lyft Line numerous times and
really enjoy it.

~~~
sliverstorm
_the CPUC says that under California law it 's illegal for these ride-sharing
services to charge passengers an individual fare when carrying multiple people
in one vehicle._

It seems pretty clear to me. CPUC isn't against multiple passengers in the
same car. They are against billing those passengers individually, for whatever
reason that rule was originally enacted. Perhaps to prevent cabbies from
charging pairs of passengers $4 each when a single passenger would be charged
$5.

~~~
tswartz
So if it is illegal to charge people individually to carpool, how do the
airport shuttle vans operate? [serious question]. They charge everyone
separately and everyone rides together.

~~~
zorpner
Airport shuttle vans typically operate under a passenger stage corporation
permit and charge a flat-rate fee per-person for transport. Charter-party
carriers (which is what Uber/Lyft/etc currently operate as in CA) charge based
on mileage or time and are prohibited from individual charges for multi-person
rides (with a bunch of exceptions, like if they're in Lake Tahoe or if they're
going to or from a hot air balloon).

~~~
mayanksinghal
> flat-rate fee per-person for transport

That was not the case. I remember paying a different amount than the person I
was sitting next to, because we were travelling different distances.

~~~
brewdad
True. It's a flat rate for a given town or neighborhood. You won't be charged
for traffic delays as you would in a cab however nor can the driver charge you
more if he needs to detour around road construction or some other issue.

The rate is the same for everyone in a given "zone" regardless of the specific
route the driver must take.

------
dragonwriter
> California deems carpooling via all ride-share services illegal

The whole reason that charter party carrier laws and regulation are applied to
Uber, Lyft, etc., in California is that they fall outside of the ridesharing
exemption to those laws.

~~~
waterlesscloud
Seriously, can we stop this pretend game of Uber and Lyft being 'ride-
sharing'?

They are no such thing.

They're rides for hire, and pretending otherwise is insulting at best.

------
PaulHoule
This is insane. Looking at the parking and traffic and pollution issues that
plauge the big coastal cites, this makes no sense at all.

~~~
edgyswingset
That's precisely why we should be bigger advocates of public transit than we
are.

------
bramgg
Lyft has begun promoting this petition on Twitter:
[http://wh.gov/lh3L8](http://wh.gov/lh3L8)

------
beedogs
Just what California needs: more cars on the road.

Idiocy. Plain and simple.

------
sergiotapia
Why is it that almost every time I hear about a stupid law on the web, 90% of
the time it comes from California?

Do the legislators there just love making people more problems?

~~~
dragonwriter
> Why is it that almost every time I hear about a stupid law on the web, 90%
> of the time it comes from California?

Because due to its population and economy, and other factors that increase the
attention to what goes on in California, you (and the web) or more likely to
hear about anything in California than similar things in other states.

~~~
rhino369
Well, also California is probably the most regulated state.

------
CalRobert
I spent a year in a relationship between SF and LA, which meant a lot of
driving up and down the state. I almost always had one or two people sharing
the ride with me who I found on Craigslist. Given that at least some of these
people could have driven themselves but didn't feel like it and just wanted to
split gas money, why in the world is this illegal??

~~~
CalRobert
Although, reading the tone of the article it would seem that they aren't
focusing on places like Craigslist, zimride, etc.

------
LarryMade2
Hmm I remember the blue ride-share info signs out on the highway years ago.
but doing a web search cant seem to find info on them. Was wondering if there
was any info in there about carpools sharing gas money and such... ahhh, here
it is:

[http://www.rideshare.511.org/](http://www.rideshare.511.org/)

------
kibaekr
Didn't SF try to ban Airbnb a while back too? Whatever happened to that?

------
transfire
None of this will matter is a decade or two. Autonomous taxis will take over,
and then a handful of gents will rake in all the money and everyone else in
the industry will be chronically de-employed.

~~~
hindsightbias
And they'll blame technology. Uber/Lyft will probably try to litigate against
autonomous vehicles.

~~~
groby_b
Unless Uber/Lyft have management that is blind to reality, they'll be _using_
autonomous vehicles.

They have no long-term obligation to the drivers, and they have no business
need for actual human drivers. What makes you think they won't be early
adopters for autonomous vehicles?

------
burtonator
they should continue the practice and publicly shame any politicians who tries
to stop them.

Good luck running for an election again when you're destroying the environment
with more cars.

This is California!

------
o0-0o
Then how are the Google and Faceblock buses legal?

~~~
dragonwriter
Most likely, they aren't Charter Party Carriers -- their purpose and operation
in general don't seem like that kind of carrier -- and therefore aren't
covered by the laws that restrict what Charter Party Carriers can do, but by
entirely different sets of rules.

------
jaunkst
Just got to transcend your humanity lol. If your 51% robot would the law still
apply?[http://geekologie.com/2014/09/how-hitchhiking-robot-
survived...](http://geekologie.com/2014/09/how-hitchhiking-robot-survived-
trip-acro.php)

