
S.F., L.A. threaten Uber, Lyft, Sidecar with legal action - ilamont
http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/S-F-L-A-threaten-Uber-Lyft-Sidecar-with-5781328.php
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toasted
It is only a matter of time before these outfits are replaced by
decentralised, actual peer-to-peer networks, either running off blockchain
technology or similar decentralised databases, with no house take and the only
option for government being charges against individual operators. There is no
network lockin effect when drivers can easily install a competing app and
drive for no commission to anyone else.

~~~
smaili
I disagree. People were saying the same thing about Facebook and Diaspora but
that never actually happened.

~~~
toasted
Facebook has a strong network effect in that everyone is on it and few regular
people are interested in signing up for multiple social networks.

OTOH, rideshare drivers are incentivised to have as many (useful) rideshare
apps on their phones as possible to maximise their ride volume, and customers
are then incentivised to order their rides from the rideshare app with the
lowest commission, and eventually a race to the bottom will result.

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bigdubs
The bit about Uber saying it screened drivers thoroughly, and then the DA (or
the office) finding examples where that was clearly not true is interesting
and (IMHO) not unreasonable.

The weights and measures complaint I am curious about and wonder if it's to do
with surge pricing. For the record I'm against surge pricing as I feel it
amounts to usury in the Aquinian sense.

~~~
Meekro
I wonder how many people in ordinary taxis got assaulted during the same time
period. The DA's "failed background check" example reminds me of how one Model
S caught on fire, and everyone freaked out and forgot that regular cars do
that all the time, too.

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jonknee
Yea and it wasn't really failed. Uber says they weed out people with dangerous
driving records and the DA didn't mention the driver had one. The cited
"Felony drug dealing" sounds really scary, but it was for selling weed five
years ago. After this specific case Uber volunteered to make its background
checks more rigorous.

[http://www.sfgate.com/default/article/Uber-driver-charged-
wi...](http://www.sfgate.com/default/article/Uber-driver-charged-with-
punching-S-F-passenger-5526413.php)

Seems like a DA being a DA and it will go away once his power tantrum runs its
course.

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anigbrowl
George Gascón is not someone given to 'power tantrums'. On the contrary, he
has a reputation for booth coolheadedness and very high ethical standards. I
think you should read up on him before throwing stereotypes around.

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clarkm
It's interesting to contrast this article with the update that was just
emailed out to the Uber Oklahoma list:

"Today, we are thrilled to announce that the Tulsa City Council and Mayor
Bartlett have paved the way for a permanent home for uberX in Tulsa by signing
the recently passed rideshare ordinance."

[http://us1.campaign-
archive1.com/?u=8d2fd6968b2b5c64d0d22dba...](http://us1.campaign-
archive1.com/?u=8d2fd6968b2b5c64d0d22dba2&id=7ab4f30f99)

 _Edit_ Here's a copy of the ordinance:
[http://councildocs.tulsacouncil.org/SuperContainer/RawData//...](http://councildocs.tulsacouncil.org/SuperContainer/RawData//671AOKJV882014103244/14-678-1a.pdf?a=1)

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tunesmith
I hadn't really thought about it before but it strikes me as kind of odd that
a taxi/limo/uber with one passenger would be allowed to use the car pool
lane... given that the driver wouldn't otherwise be going there.

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baddox
Is "transit lane" the same thing as a carpool lane?

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mikeryan
No, in SF and other urban areas transit lanes are exclusively for taxis and
buses.

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colechristensen
I am all for reasonable regulation my Uber and it's kind and severe punishment
for straying outside that regulation.

The thing is that unlike my own fine city of Minneapolis, many other
metropolitan areas seem incapable or unwilling to respond reasonably to try to
work with these companies to come to a mutually agreeable set of regulations.

The city governments are incompetent to do their jobs instead they throw
around legal threats and the companies openly flaunt the law. Neither seem to
be doing what's right.

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refurb
It will be interesting to see how this all plays out. Uber has gotten big
enough (and has enough cash) to put up a pretty good fight in court.

At the same time, city attorney's have a lot of stuff on their plates.
Obviously someone thought this was worth spending on time (aka the higher ups
want it to happen).

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walterbell
It rarely results in meaningful regulation of the business, yet provides
endless free publicity and brand building.

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ilaksh
Yes the laws are outdated, but it almost seems like they are just ignoring all
of them.

And of course the government feels pressure to stay relevant.

But legal threats and other government systems can't keep up with a fast-
changing digital economy.

I think that we need some kind of effectively integrated system of regulation
that can somehow represent the public good in a way that interfaces more
directly with things like mobile apps and the blockchain, etc.

I also think we need to move away from a single-point-of-failure, all-powerful
centralized government into something more egalitarian and decentralized.
Maybe even polycentric.

Exactly how you do all of those things is an incredibly challenging set of
problems.

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pbreit
Uber, et al are not going away so the governments need to figure out the
proper amount of oversight and stop this ridiculous volley of shutdown
threats.

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bsder
Um, not at all.

Given the absolute raft of laws that Uber/Lyft/et al. violate most of the DA's
are being more respectful than I would have expected, actually.

SF could force these services to shut down tomorrow and they would be on very
safe legal grounds.

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pbreit
Does it really make sense for there to be a "raft of laws" concerning driving
people around for money? What is the purpose of such laws?

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bsder
Um, to make sure that the guy whose cab you are getting into actually has
things like ... say ... brakes?

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cwiz
I'm thinking more & more about decentralised p2p bitcoin based uber which
cannot be ever shut down or controlled. Now it's becoming apparent that it's
what world will soon need.

~~~
sneak
If it can't be shut down, there's nothing stopping violent muggers or
kidnappers from participating as drivers. If there's a feedback system,
there's nothing stopping Sybil attacks from gaming it and forging reviews en
masse.

You have to trust someone's opinion, somewhere.

~~~
baddox
Of course there would still need to be either reputation systems or
arbitration systems. The reason restaurants usually don't plainly defraud you
isn't the threat of litigation, because litigation would cost much more than
the value of the transaction. It's because they rely on reputation and repeat
business.

Decentralized or massively federated reputation and arbitration networks are
possible. Clever people would need to figure out a way to set things up, but
it's certainly not a technological impossibility.

