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I see a great degree of superficiality in all comments. Uber has been banned for breaking the italian law, period. That the law for taxi and similar services m

I see a great degree of superficiality in all comments. Uber has been banned for breaking the italian law, period. That the law for taxi and similar services might be too much restrictive and could be improved in favour of the market is a completely different matter. In Italy there are precise rules regarding where and how you can pick up passengers and Uber is violating them. This is why it was banned. The sentence even states this explicitly: that the duty of the magister is to apply the current law and not the enter in the merits of how it could be improved for the benefit of the market. Did anybody read the sentence before commenting? Uber has been also banned in Berlin and Amburg and I haven't seen any similar comment here. I would be very curios to understand why.

Pyxl101 10y ago
> And in fact they have not been banned: they have been given 10 days to adjust to the italian regulations ELSE they will be banned. Can you share the source for this information? I've been having trouble finding out any details about why they were banned, and the articles I've read just say they were banned, not that they have 10 days to comply. The primary English source seems to be a brief Reuters article with no details.
- register 10y ago
  You are right, I misunderstood what I read. They have been given 10 days to comply and not to adjust. I have amended my comment.
  - Pyxl101 10y ago
    It is a reasonable assumption. I would hope that if Uber complies with whatever laws they were found to be violating, that they could continue operating. However, whether that's a plausible outcome depends on the reason why they're banned. If the Italian court determined that the "ease of hailing rides through a smartphone app" was the reason why competition was "unfair" (just to make something up - I haven't been able to discover the actual reason), then there's no real way for them to come into compliance.
Dylan16807 10y ago
> In Italy there are precise rules regarding where and how you can pick up passengers and Uber is violating them. Do those rules make any sense? If they broke a nonsense law, then it's not as simple as "broke the law, period". Maybe there should be outrage against the people that put the law into place. But that's only an 'if'.
- AlecSchueler 10y ago
  It doesn't matter. That's something that should be brought up and discussed in parliament and then either changed or accepted as it is. The people enforcing the laws have to follow the legislation as it stands.
  - HappyTypist 10y ago
    There is a thing called discretion. Perhaps France should jail a few million women for wearing pants? Just because something is "law" doesn't mean you have an obligation to follow it. Uber offers services far superior to uncompetitive, entitled taxi drivers that should've been put out of business years ago. I hope Uber will continue operations in Italy.
    - Marazan 10y ago
      Uncompetitive? Uber has spent billions subsidising taxi rides. That is the very definition of uncompetitive! If they charged the amount to of money needed to actually turn a profit/breakeven then suddenly all those regular taxi companies would be competitive at worst and cheaper in many situations.
      - patrickaljord 10y ago
        How is it uncompetitive to sell at a loss to provide cheaper services to customers? How is that a bad thing for customers? It looks like it's only a bad thing for taxi companies (a tiny percentage of the population) while it's a good thing for the majority of Italians, this law protects and favors corporations instead of the people, this is the textbook definition of Fascism. Edit: About price dumping, this is a myth. When has this ever happened and tell me how could Uber remain a monopoly if its prices are too high? Competitors will show up because there will be good money to be made. The only monopolies that can last despite being overpriced are the ones protected by state violence and state laws that make competition illegal, a good example here would be, I don't know, Italian taxi companies? Also see on how accusations of 'price dumping' are always used as a disguised for protectionism https://ideas.repec.org/a/ags/ecjilt/23876.html https://ideas.repec.org/a/ags/ecjilt/23876.html
Markoff 10y ago
as far as i am aware nobody voted for Uber in last elections in Italy to be the one changing the laws if you wanna do business you must follow to law, if you don't like it then either change law or go back to US where are people apparently more relaxed about breaking law, but Stilton is not do business while breaking law
- Markoff 10y ago
  solution
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
- yummyfajitas 10y ago
  As far as I'm aware nobody voted for Martin Luther King in any election. If you wanna ride the bus in the US you must follow the law (negros to the back), if you don't like it then either change the law or go back to Africa. Especially you, Rosa Parks. Or perhaps in the historical Italian context, "if you wanna be Jewish go to Madagascar or otherwise emigrate." Your argument - "accept an unjust law or leave" - applies equally well to all sorts of laws. Since your argument implies an insane conclusion, it must be wrong. Or do you endorse the conclusions I draw above?
  - throwaway2048 10y ago
    These are outragous, completely unwarrented comparisons.
    - yummyfajitas 10y ago
      Why? All were against the law at one time, and emigration to avoid the impact of the law was possible. (C.f. the Madagascar plan.) Thus, the preconditions of markoffs argument apply. If the conclusion is outrageous, it's a flaw in his argument.
HappyTypist 10y ago
The state apologists who think that 'the law' is some kind of holy bible, when there clearly are far better outcomes from sidestepping overly burdenous regulations is appalling but not surprising. It's no surprise that the US consistently outperforms the EU in GDP growth and innovation. The best approach to burdenous regulation is to grow fast enough to challenge it.
- etnos 10y ago
  >The state apologists who think that 'the law' is some kind of holy bible LMAO are you even being serious with this ?
- patrickaljord 10y ago
  Innovation almost always sidestep regulations, by definition. It offer a better way than the current way which is regulated according to its current specificities, and to offer this better way to do thing is to sidestep regulations to show how much better it is. Forcing innovators to "respect the law" squarely is basically killing innovation and why we see so little of it in the EU compared to the US. Note that regulations are also growing in the US and it keeps getting worse too sadly.
  - camus2 10y ago
    > Innovation almost always sidestep regulations, by definition No it doesn't. And we're not talking about "Innovation" here, we're talking about a pure lucrative business.
    - patrickaljord 10y ago
      Uber did bring an innovative business model and service.
- soVeryTired 10y ago
  Sorry, how do you distinguish between regulation that's 'overly burdenous' and regulation that's fair and sensible? Also, how do you measure innovation?
nkkollaw 10y ago
Laws get _applied_ by judges, they're not always black and white. There are many, many sentences that apply a law in a different way given a specific case, that create a precedent that can then be used in the future to regulate something. You don't need a new law. I am not a lawyer, but I'm not sure judges weren't allowed to choose to do that in this case.
- _joe 10y ago
  Please beware Italy is not a common law country so legal precedents are not binding, and you do need a new law here to future regulate something.
  - nkkollaw 10y ago
    It isn't a common law country, but there is the concept of precedent, and the majority of sentences will actually not override a previous sentence given the same kind of issue. I was actually talking about this with a lawyer because of a problem I was having, and that's what he told me. You can pretty safely use precedents to guide you on what you want to do. The difference is that laws tend to of course carry less uncertainty than precedents, and you can't get punished if you were following a law (unless it gets changed retroactively). In case of a trial (in my case, at least), you would admit that you haven't followed the law, but cite the precedents and most likely win. So, precedents are not binding, but in practice they're close to it.
  - cagataygurturk 10y ago
    In Roman Law, legal precendents are one of the sources of the law system. If there is no explicit regulation about a matter, It is recommended that Judges apply other Judges' decisions. If two Judges at the same level decides differently, the matter is solved in higher courts.
  - disordinary 10y ago
    I think a number of commenters here probably don't understand the culture outside of the US. I'm not judging or saying any one country is better than another, but some places don't place as much credence on the free market and businesses regulating themselves.
Xylakant 10y ago
Uber has been banned in Berlin and Hamburg for operating an illegal taxi service without applying for the required papers. The were breaking the law, simple as that. It's a thing Uber likes to do, it's just not working as well in the EU as in other regions of the world.
maverick_iceman 10y ago
“One has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws.” ― Martin Luther King Jr.
- toyg 10y ago
  Are you seriously comparing institutional racism to taxi regulations...? I just can't even.
  - psyc 10y ago
    Comparing two things only requires the presence of an analogy, not moral equivalence.
Grue3 10y ago
I see a great degree of superficiality in all comments. These seismologists [1] were convicted for breaking the Italian law, period. That the law that allows to jail seismologists for not predicting earthquakes could be improved is a completely different matter. In Italy there are precise rules regarding how to warn people of earthquakes and these scientists have violated them. This is why they're in prison. The sentence even states this explicitly: that the duty of the magister is to apply the current law and not the enter in the merits of how it could be improved for the benefit of the people. Did anybody read the sentence before commenting? Scientists have also been put to prison in Russia and North Korea, and I haven't seen any similar comments here. I would be very curious to understand why. [1] http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-20025626 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-20025626
- register 10y ago
  Again, let me reiterate that BBC and in general British press are often biased against Italy. These are the facts: all the scientists have been absolved. The only person convicted has been the vice-president of the civil protection for declaring in public ( and in TV ) at the beginning of the earthquake that there were "absolutely no risks" associated to the initial earthquake waves. He has been found guilty of providing superficial, generic and inaccurate informations in relation to the role and responsabilities he was covering. Instead of merely reporting acritically what you read in newspapers from other countries , if you want to be objective try also to read italian newspapers: http://www.ilfattoquotidiano.it/2015/11/20/terremoto-laquila-cassazione-assolti-scienziati-commissione-grandi-rischi-condannato-solo-de-bernardinis/2239069/ http://www.ilfattoquotidiano.it/2015/11/20/terremoto-laquila... Right now you are just showing your bias as many others have done before you. These are just personal attacks against a country and are not based on any fact. Can we start to downvote these kind of posts??
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - Grue3 10y ago
    Oh god, spare me this bullshit. I'm not British, or American, I just put up the first source that's considered reasonably reliable (nobody's gonna complain about BBC, right? Or so I thought!) And yet here you are, because god forbid somebody paints Italian justice system in less than positive light. You might have noticed that I even insulted my own country (Russia) in my post, so you can't say I'm biased or anything. And it's not like there's lack of examples I could've chosen. Berlusconi, Amanda Knox, the list goes on and on.

Pyxl101 10y ago

> And in fact they have not been banned: they have been given 10 days to adjust to the italian regulations ELSE they will be banned. Can you share the source for this information? I've been having trouble finding out any details about why they were banned, and the articles I've read just say they were banned, not that they have 10 days to comply. The primary English source seems to be a brief Reuters article with no details.

register 10y ago
You are right, I misunderstood what I read. They have been given 10 days to comply and not to adjust. I have amended my comment.
- Pyxl101 10y ago
  It is a reasonable assumption. I would hope that if Uber complies with whatever laws they were found to be violating, that they could continue operating. However, whether that's a plausible outcome depends on the reason why they're banned. If the Italian court determined that the "ease of hailing rides through a smartphone app" was the reason why competition was "unfair" (just to make something up - I haven't been able to discover the actual reason), then there's no real way for them to come into compliance.

Dylan16807 10y ago

> In Italy there are precise rules regarding where and how you can pick up passengers and Uber is violating them. Do those rules make any sense? If they broke a nonsense law, then it's not as simple as "broke the law, period". Maybe there should be outrage against the people that put the law into place. But that's only an 'if'.

AlecSchueler 10y ago
It doesn't matter. That's something that should be brought up and discussed in parliament and then either changed or accepted as it is. The people enforcing the laws have to follow the legislation as it stands.
- HappyTypist 10y ago
  There is a thing called discretion. Perhaps France should jail a few million women for wearing pants? Just because something is "law" doesn't mean you have an obligation to follow it. Uber offers services far superior to uncompetitive, entitled taxi drivers that should've been put out of business years ago. I hope Uber will continue operations in Italy.
  - Marazan 10y ago
    Uncompetitive? Uber has spent billions subsidising taxi rides. That is the very definition of uncompetitive! If they charged the amount to of money needed to actually turn a profit/breakeven then suddenly all those regular taxi companies would be competitive at worst and cheaper in many situations.
    - patrickaljord 10y ago
      How is it uncompetitive to sell at a loss to provide cheaper services to customers? How is that a bad thing for customers? It looks like it's only a bad thing for taxi companies (a tiny percentage of the population) while it's a good thing for the majority of Italians, this law protects and favors corporations instead of the people, this is the textbook definition of Fascism. Edit: About price dumping, this is a myth. When has this ever happened and tell me how could Uber remain a monopoly if its prices are too high? Competitors will show up because there will be good money to be made. The only monopolies that can last despite being overpriced are the ones protected by state violence and state laws that make competition illegal, a good example here would be, I don't know, Italian taxi companies? Also see on how accusations of 'price dumping' are always used as a disguised for protectionism https://ideas.repec.org/a/ags/ecjilt/23876.html https://ideas.repec.org/a/ags/ecjilt/23876.html

Markoff 10y ago

as far as i am aware nobody voted for Uber in last elections in Italy to be the one changing the laws if you wanna do business you must follow to law, if you don't like it then either change law or go back to US where are people apparently more relaxed about breaking law, but Stilton is not do business while breaking law

Markoff 10y ago
solution
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
yummyfajitas 10y ago
As far as I'm aware nobody voted for Martin Luther King in any election. If you wanna ride the bus in the US you must follow the law (negros to the back), if you don't like it then either change the law or go back to Africa. Especially you, Rosa Parks. Or perhaps in the historical Italian context, "if you wanna be Jewish go to Madagascar or otherwise emigrate." Your argument - "accept an unjust law or leave" - applies equally well to all sorts of laws. Since your argument implies an insane conclusion, it must be wrong. Or do you endorse the conclusions I draw above?
- throwaway2048 10y ago
  These are outragous, completely unwarrented comparisons.
  - yummyfajitas 10y ago
    Why? All were against the law at one time, and emigration to avoid the impact of the law was possible. (C.f. the Madagascar plan.) Thus, the preconditions of markoffs argument apply. If the conclusion is outrageous, it's a flaw in his argument.

HappyTypist 10y ago

The state apologists who think that 'the law' is some kind of holy bible, when there clearly are far better outcomes from sidestepping overly burdenous regulations is appalling but not surprising. It's no surprise that the US consistently outperforms the EU in GDP growth and innovation. The best approach to burdenous regulation is to grow fast enough to challenge it.

etnos 10y ago
>The state apologists who think that 'the law' is some kind of holy bible LMAO are you even being serious with this ?
patrickaljord 10y ago
Innovation almost always sidestep regulations, by definition. It offer a better way than the current way which is regulated according to its current specificities, and to offer this better way to do thing is to sidestep regulations to show how much better it is. Forcing innovators to "respect the law" squarely is basically killing innovation and why we see so little of it in the EU compared to the US. Note that regulations are also growing in the US and it keeps getting worse too sadly.
- camus2 10y ago
  > Innovation almost always sidestep regulations, by definition No it doesn't. And we're not talking about "Innovation" here, we're talking about a pure lucrative business.
  - patrickaljord 10y ago
    Uber did bring an innovative business model and service.
soVeryTired 10y ago
Sorry, how do you distinguish between regulation that's 'overly burdenous' and regulation that's fair and sensible? Also, how do you measure innovation?

nkkollaw 10y ago

Laws get _applied_ by judges, they're not always black and white. There are many, many sentences that apply a law in a different way given a specific case, that create a precedent that can then be used in the future to regulate something. You don't need a new law. I am not a lawyer, but I'm not sure judges weren't allowed to choose to do that in this case.

_joe 10y ago
Please beware Italy is not a common law country so legal precedents are not binding, and you do need a new law here to future regulate something.
- nkkollaw 10y ago
  It isn't a common law country, but there is the concept of precedent, and the majority of sentences will actually not override a previous sentence given the same kind of issue. I was actually talking about this with a lawyer because of a problem I was having, and that's what he told me. You can pretty safely use precedents to guide you on what you want to do. The difference is that laws tend to of course carry less uncertainty than precedents, and you can't get punished if you were following a law (unless it gets changed retroactively). In case of a trial (in my case, at least), you would admit that you haven't followed the law, but cite the precedents and most likely win. So, precedents are not binding, but in practice they're close to it.
- cagataygurturk 10y ago
  In Roman Law, legal precendents are one of the sources of the law system. If there is no explicit regulation about a matter, It is recommended that Judges apply other Judges' decisions. If two Judges at the same level decides differently, the matter is solved in higher courts.
- disordinary 10y ago
  I think a number of commenters here probably don't understand the culture outside of the US. I'm not judging or saying any one country is better than another, but some places don't place as much credence on the free market and businesses regulating themselves.

Xylakant 10y ago

Uber has been banned in Berlin and Hamburg for operating an illegal taxi service without applying for the required papers. The were breaking the law, simple as that. It's a thing Uber likes to do, it's just not working as well in the EU as in other regions of the world.

maverick_iceman 10y ago

“One has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws.” ― Martin Luther King Jr.

toyg 10y ago
Are you seriously comparing institutional racism to taxi regulations...? I just can't even.
- psyc 10y ago
  Comparing two things only requires the presence of an analogy, not moral equivalence.

Grue3 10y ago

I see a great degree of superficiality in all comments. These seismologists [1] were convicted for breaking the Italian law, period. That the law that allows to jail seismologists for not predicting earthquakes could be improved is a completely different matter. In Italy there are precise rules regarding how to warn people of earthquakes and these scientists have violated them. This is why they're in prison. The sentence even states this explicitly: that the duty of the magister is to apply the current law and not the enter in the merits of how it could be improved for the benefit of the people. Did anybody read the sentence before commenting? Scientists have also been put to prison in Russia and North Korea, and I haven't seen any similar comments here. I would be very curious to understand why. [1] http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-20025626 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-20025626

register 10y ago
Again, let me reiterate that BBC and in general British press are often biased against Italy. These are the facts: all the scientists have been absolved. The only person convicted has been the vice-president of the civil protection for declaring in public ( and in TV ) at the beginning of the earthquake that there were "absolutely no risks" associated to the initial earthquake waves. He has been found guilty of providing superficial, generic and inaccurate informations in relation to the role and responsabilities he was covering. Instead of merely reporting acritically what you read in newspapers from other countries , if you want to be objective try also to read italian newspapers: http://www.ilfattoquotidiano.it/2015/11/20/terremoto-laquila-cassazione-assolti-scienziati-commissione-grandi-rischi-condannato-solo-de-bernardinis/2239069/ http://www.ilfattoquotidiano.it/2015/11/20/terremoto-laquila... Right now you are just showing your bias as many others have done before you. These are just personal attacks against a country and are not based on any fact. Can we start to downvote these kind of posts??
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- Grue3 10y ago
  Oh god, spare me this bullshit. I'm not British, or American, I just put up the first source that's considered reasonably reliable (nobody's gonna complain about BBC, right? Or so I thought!) And yet here you are, because god forbid somebody paints Italian justice system in less than positive light. You might have noticed that I even insulted my own country (Russia) in my post, so you can't say I'm biased or anything. And it's not like there's lack of examples I could've chosen. Berlusconi, Amanda Knox, the list goes on and on.