11 ms·

So, simple question, but: what is the legal reason I, not a customer of Bird and having never signed an EULA in their app, can't just take a Bird scooter off th

by jzl 8y ago

So, simple question, but: what is the legal reason I, not a customer of Bird and having never signed an EULA in their app, can't just take a Bird scooter off the street and just keep it in my house, even as decoration without modifying it? What law protects a business model that relies on leaving property all around town, completely unencumbered? (I know about the police auctions, but that's not the question here.)

rebuilder 8y ago
Wouldn't that be the same legal reason you can't just take any scooter off the street and keep it in your house?
- jzl 8y ago
  But, why not? Let's say a (regular) scooter or even bicycle has been sitting on the sidewalk for a couple of days. Is it illegal for me to consider it abandoned and just take it? Consider the case of an item that actually is abandoned. Don't property owners have some amount of legal responsibility to not leave an item in public unlocked? Granted, "unlocked" might be the key. You can't ride a Bird scooter without the app. But it isn't exactly locked in the same way as a bicycle. [Downvoters: I'm not saying that I think I should be able to grab a Bird off the street, I just want to hear the legal explanation of how this works.]
  - rebuilder 8y ago
    I think this would be a jurisdiction-specific question. Where I live, you are not entitled to just keep found items, but should return them to lost and found instead.
  - e1ven 8y ago
    Abandoned property laws vary by jurisdiction. Typically they involve reporting it to the police/authorities.
  - chipotle_coyote 8y ago
    Yes, it is illegal for you to consider it abandoned. In the US, at least, "abandoned" has a specific legal meaning which involves intent: "Abandoned property refers to any personal property left by an owner who has intentionally relinquished all rights to its control. When property is intentionally abandoned, it belongs to no one until it is found and when it is found, the title (ownership) transfers to whoever finds it and possesses it with the intent to take ownership." https://www.legalmatch.com/law-library/article/abandoned-personal-property.html https://www.legalmatch.com/law-library/article/abandoned-per... Property owners don't have any legal responsibility not to leave an item in public unlocked. That might be careless, but it's not illegal.
    - gamblor956 8y ago
      In the US, at least, what constitutes "abandoned" property differs from state to state and even within the states at the county/municipality level. If Bird leaves a scooter in the road, for someone else to use, they have relinquished the right to control the device, and it is thus abandoned; the alternative is that they are deliberately littering or committing various other property infractions or misdemeanors.
      - deleted 8y ago
        [deleted]
      - dragonwriter 8y ago
        > If Bird leaves a scooter in the road, for someone else to use, they have relinquished the right to control the device, and it is thus abandoned No, if they are charging use fees, offering money for people to choose charge them, etc., they have not relinquished all rights to control. > the alternative is that they are deliberately littering or committing various other property infractions or misdemeanors. That's a big false dichotomy.
        Latteland 8y ago
        You can argue that, but you can't just go around stealing things that are sitting on the street or sidewalk. Can you take the doormat outside a door on a building? Or take a sign on the sidewalk? No. Take a sign that the city has left just screwed into a metal pole?
  - jalgos_eminator 8y ago
    If its not yours, you can't take possession of it. Just because it is currently resting on a sidewalk doesn't mean that it is any less the property of someone. Besides, most cities have a formal process to determine if a vehicle really is abandoned. My neighbor has a sign on the dash of his van explaining that it is in working condition, is able to be moved, and is definitely not abandoned. Obviously he got complaints from other neighbors in the past about it.
    - gamblor956 8y ago
      Cars are very different from scooters; not in the least because cars are individually identified and licensed.
      - Dylan16807 8y ago
        What nonsense is this? A license plate affects ownership law? The scooters can be individually identified too.
        gamblor956 8y ago
        The point was that leaving a vehicle in a parking space is not an indicator of abandonment because ownership of a vehicle is based on registration, not physical possession. The same is not true of scooters, and that makes all the difference.
        Dylan16807 8y ago
        Registration is for tracking ownership, paperwork that is filed up to a month after ownership changes. It doesn't create ownership.
  - throwaway98434 8y ago
    Generally speaking theft requires an intent to deprive an owner of property. It's a crime to take my bike intending to deprive me of it, but it's not a crime to take my bike while attempting to return it to me. Property owners do not have any obligation to lock up their items. There are sometimes very specific laws regarding found property when the owner cannot be located, generally these involve turning the property over to the state first.
  - cortesoft 8y ago
    It depends on the jurisdiction, but a lot of places have laws around found property... often a finder would have rights to truly abandoned property, but there are usually laws in place that establish a procedure for determining if something is truly abandoned or just lost/misplaced/stolen. Usually that process involves turning the property in to the government, and waiting some period of time for the original owner to claim it. If it is not claimed, it would become yours. I don't know of any law that requires property on public space to be locked. There may be laws saying you can't leave property in public for more than a certain amount of time, but I am pretty sure none of those would allow anyone to just take the property. https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/lost_property https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/lost_property https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/abandoned_property https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/abandoned_property
    - grkvlt 8y ago
      In the UK there is the crime of 'Theft by finding' [0] when you find something you think is abandoned and take it, but do not do anything to determine if it really was abandoned, as opposed to lost, unattended, etc. The Wikipedia article suggests similar offences exist elsewhere... 0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theft_by_finding https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theft_by_finding
  - dragonwriter 8y ago
    > Let's say a (regular) scooter or even bicycle has been sitting on the sidewalk for a couple of days. Is it illegal for me to consider it abandoned and just take it? In California, if you find it and choose to take charge of it, you become a depositary for the legal owner. Additionally, if it is worth $100+, and you can't locate and return it to the owner within a reasonable period, you are required to turn it into the police or sheriff depending on the jurisdiction in which it was found. It may become yours if the owner doesn't claim it from the police/sheriff within 90 days, with some additional requirements if it is worth more than $250. If it was intentionally abandoned by the owner this doesn't apply. EDIT: Source, Civil Code § 2080 et seq..
    - gamblor956 8y ago
      The legal argument of course is that Bird has intentionally abandoned their scooters in the public way, and this is the general consensus of my many friends in the local DA offices. (Translation: they don't think it's a crime and they won't prosecute any such cases even if for some reason someone is ticketed or arrested for it.)
      - dragonwriter 8y ago
        > The legal argument of course is that Bird has intentionally abandoned their scooters in the public way, and this is the general consensus of my many friends in the local DA offices. (Translation: they don't think it's a crime and they won't prosecute any such cases even if for some reason someone is ticketed or arrested for it.) They clearly haven't abandoned them as that applies generally to property; if you are in fact charging rental fees, you haven't intentionally relinquished the right to control something, as you are exercising that right by charging others for the right to temporarily exercise some portion of it. There may be rules regarding public rights of way which impact this, though the US Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has already rejected the claim that property left unattended on a public sidewalk is therefore abandoned and subject to deprivation when the City of Los Angeles used that as an excuse to take the goods belonging to the homeless without due process, so I think what is really going on in those DAs offices is people have made the decision “we don't like what Bird is doing so we aren't going to enforce the law when people commit crimes against them.” https://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-9th-circuit/1611251.html https://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-9th-circuit/1611251.html
  - rdiddly 8y ago
    On the one hand you have property rights, which some siblings of my current comment argue are inalienable concerning the scooter. "Don't touch my stuff!" On the other hand you have the ground occupied by or encumbered by said property, which is also property, owned by somebody, often the public, and likely intended for some other purpose besides storing your property. "Don't make your stuff our problem!" Different places balance the two interests in different ways. Most provide some legal framework or mechanism by which your private property rights can become subordinate to public property rights, i.e. your property is declared abandoned, or simply seized based on a nuisance or safety argument.
  - arkades 8y ago
    The short version is: Every state has regulations on the exact process by which private individuals can be deprived of their property rights due to "abandonment." Not a single one of those regulations is as straight-forward as "finders keepers."
- gamblor956 8y ago
  No, because if a scooter is just left lying around on the street it is abandoned property and so generally there is no law against taking it. Which is the same problem that Bird is facing--in cities where they aren't actually permitted by the appropriate authority (city, county, etc.), Birds are abandoned property. In cities where they have been granted a permit to conduct business activities, the question is more nebulous, but thus far DAs are decisively on the side of not treating it as a crime.
  - praneshp 8y ago
    > No, because if a scooter is just left lying around on the street it is abandoned property and so generally there is no law against taking it. Is there a citation for this in CA? can you just take abandoned property and claim it as yours without a single paperwork step?
    - lightedman 8y ago
      Abandoned property of California is found in a place where the owner intended to leave it. However, the condition of the property is such that it is unlikely that the owner intends to reclaim it. California abandoned property belongs to the finder. IOW, unless it is in bad/inoperable condition, you are not likely to get away with attempting to take one from the sidewalk. Just wait for the auction. For further info, contact the CA State Controller's Office, they handle abandoned property issues.
  - tln 8y ago
    Are parked cars also abandoned then? I'm not so sure scooters with GPS tracking and contractors looking for them would be considered abandoned in the eyes of the law, even if they have been left in an unpermitted location.
    - CodeWriter23 8y ago
      Usually after a certain time frame, for example 3 days in LA, the car is considered abandoned. Fortunately my neighbors don’t dime me for those weeks I stay in code rushing.
peterwwillis 8y ago
Can you take a random UHaul truck off the street and keep it in your garage? You can find those things all around town.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
Balgair 8y ago
Look, I'm not gonna say that it's super-duper legal to do what you are saying. But (in SF at least) walking by Civic Center BART on Market Street, in broad daylight, you can gawk at least 10 homeless people per hour shooting up black tar heroin directly across from about five or more uniformed SFPD officers and then witness no arrests for such flagrant behavior [0]. Hell, if you've not seen a homeless person shit in the middle of the street on a Tuesday, you need to get out more. Like, Bird/Lime/whatever may be sending out these notices to Cory Doctorow's blogosphere Zeppelins [1], but ain't no cop in SF (and likely in nearly every other city in the US) is EVER going to prosecute you for making a cheapo scooter into a vase for growing your weeds in. Like every single other person that isn't on the books at these scoot companies (and ~90% of the people in them anyway), all members of the legal system have better things to worry about. [0] https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/A-Bay-Area-New-Year-s-resolution-fixing-the-13500968.php https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/A-Bay-Area-New-Y... [1] https://xkcd.com/345/ https://xkcd.com/345/
dcosson 8y ago
Wait til you learn about cars! People literally leave them all around the city, for hours or even days at a time. Completely unencumbered as well, and taking up prime public space that could be used by the public in so many other ways. You just need a jack and a tow truck, you can go around collecting as many as you want and keep them. They've been abandoned after all, because someone has walked away from them. (Obviously sarcasm, but as a non-car-owner I get a kick out of people freaking out about these scooters taking up public space. Meanwhile every street in the city is full of cars with one person in them and has two lanes of free or heavily subsidized parking. It's clearly a massively less efficient use of public space, and no one ever talks about that).
- User23 8y ago
  > You just need a jack and a tow truck, you can go around collecting as many as you want and keep them. They've been abandoned after all, because someone has walked away from them. As anyone who has had their car towed when it was legally parked (buddy of mine once got towed from his own assigned spot) this is pretty much spot on. The difference is so far Bird isn't ransoming their property back.
- dman 8y ago
  If people were leaving cars on sidewalks and beaches I could see similar levels of outrage.
- ranrotx 8y ago
  Car owners pay registration fees and and gas taxes for the privilege to use the public roadways. Bird and the like just dumped their property (which makes them money) on public right-of-ways without paying for the use like every other industry does.
  - SECProto 8y ago
    That is not so easy to say, the division of taxes/cost vary by jurisdiction. Where I live, gas taxes go to provincial government which maintains only highways. Municipalities have to build/maintain urban roads, and their only funding source is property taxes (which are paid by everyone, regardless of car ownership (or scooter club membership))
notatoad 8y ago
Apparently people don't like the cars argument, so let's try bikes instead. If I leave my bike locked up outside somewhere, and you cut my lock and take it home, that's theft. You can't just steal bikes because they've been left on public land. My property doesn't cease to be my property just because it isn't on my land. Registration or licencing doesn't come into it. "Finders keepers" is not a law.
- test6554 8y ago
  Yea, people who know of property rights can get pretty disgusted at people who don't.
- vanderZwan 8y ago
  See my comment here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18890622 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18890622
- twtw 8y ago
  > You can't just steal bikes because they've been left on public land What is the anticipated solution when you leave your bike on my private land? I've seen loads of bird scooters left on private property, and I don't see what the property owners are supposed to do. Call the police every time?
  - notatoad 8y ago
    If somebody has abandoned their property on your property and you want it gone, you can move it off your property. But it still doesn't become yours, and you definitely don't need to call the police about it. Going back to the car analogy, if i park my car in your private parking lot, you can have it towed. It doesn't become your car. Same with a bike - you can move it off your property, but you can't steal it, because that would be stealing. Is there some sort of mental block happening here where people are forgetting how the world works because they hate scooters so much, or do you guys really not understand the fundamentals of property law and common sense?
    - 8y ago
olalonde 8y ago
In the unlikely case this was a genuine question, property law.
social_quotient 8y ago
I think the key issue is around “abandonment” which requires a bit of “intent”. These guys intend to go and pick these up. The same is true for a car as other pointed out but more importantly when I park my car I intend for it to be where I left it. “In law, abandonment is the relinquishment, giving up or renunciation of an interest, claim, civil proceedings, appeal, privilege, possession, or right, especially with the intent of never again resuming or reasserting it. Such intentional action may take the form of a discontinuance or a waiver.“ -It would make cool artwork! -I dislike seeing scooters strewn about all over the city.
ClassyJacket 8y ago
Probably the same law that covers other thefts?
kragen 8y ago
I'm definitely not going to leave my laptop on the table while I go to the bathroom if you're in the café. And I'm definitely not going to invite you into my office or my house, ever.

by jzl 8y ago

rebuilder 8y ago

Wouldn't that be the same legal reason you can't just take any scooter off the street and keep it in your house?

jzl 8y ago
But, why not? Let's say a (regular) scooter or even bicycle has been sitting on the sidewalk for a couple of days. Is it illegal for me to consider it abandoned and just take it? Consider the case of an item that actually is abandoned. Don't property owners have some amount of legal responsibility to not leave an item in public unlocked? Granted, "unlocked" might be the key. You can't ride a Bird scooter without the app. But it isn't exactly locked in the same way as a bicycle. [Downvoters: I'm not saying that I think I should be able to grab a Bird off the street, I just want to hear the legal explanation of how this works.]
- rebuilder 8y ago
  I think this would be a jurisdiction-specific question. Where I live, you are not entitled to just keep found items, but should return them to lost and found instead.
- e1ven 8y ago
  Abandoned property laws vary by jurisdiction. Typically they involve reporting it to the police/authorities.
- chipotle_coyote 8y ago
  Yes, it is illegal for you to consider it abandoned. In the US, at least, "abandoned" has a specific legal meaning which involves intent: "Abandoned property refers to any personal property left by an owner who has intentionally relinquished all rights to its control. When property is intentionally abandoned, it belongs to no one until it is found and when it is found, the title (ownership) transfers to whoever finds it and possesses it with the intent to take ownership." https://www.legalmatch.com/law-library/article/abandoned-personal-property.html https://www.legalmatch.com/law-library/article/abandoned-per... Property owners don't have any legal responsibility not to leave an item in public unlocked. That might be careless, but it's not illegal.
  - gamblor956 8y ago
    In the US, at least, what constitutes "abandoned" property differs from state to state and even within the states at the county/municipality level. If Bird leaves a scooter in the road, for someone else to use, they have relinquished the right to control the device, and it is thus abandoned; the alternative is that they are deliberately littering or committing various other property infractions or misdemeanors.
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
    - dragonwriter 8y ago
      > If Bird leaves a scooter in the road, for someone else to use, they have relinquished the right to control the device, and it is thus abandoned No, if they are charging use fees, offering money for people to choose charge them, etc., they have not relinquished all rights to control. > the alternative is that they are deliberately littering or committing various other property infractions or misdemeanors. That's a big false dichotomy.
      - Latteland 8y ago
        You can argue that, but you can't just go around stealing things that are sitting on the street or sidewalk. Can you take the doormat outside a door on a building? Or take a sign on the sidewalk? No. Take a sign that the city has left just screwed into a metal pole?
- jalgos_eminator 8y ago
  If its not yours, you can't take possession of it. Just because it is currently resting on a sidewalk doesn't mean that it is any less the property of someone. Besides, most cities have a formal process to determine if a vehicle really is abandoned. My neighbor has a sign on the dash of his van explaining that it is in working condition, is able to be moved, and is definitely not abandoned. Obviously he got complaints from other neighbors in the past about it.
  - gamblor956 8y ago
    Cars are very different from scooters; not in the least because cars are individually identified and licensed.
    - Dylan16807 8y ago
      What nonsense is this? A license plate affects ownership law? The scooters can be individually identified too.
      - gamblor956 8y ago
        The point was that leaving a vehicle in a parking space is not an indicator of abandonment because ownership of a vehicle is based on registration, not physical possession. The same is not true of scooters, and that makes all the difference.
        Dylan16807 8y ago
        Registration is for tracking ownership, paperwork that is filed up to a month after ownership changes. It doesn't create ownership.
- throwaway98434 8y ago
  Generally speaking theft requires an intent to deprive an owner of property. It's a crime to take my bike intending to deprive me of it, but it's not a crime to take my bike while attempting to return it to me. Property owners do not have any obligation to lock up their items. There are sometimes very specific laws regarding found property when the owner cannot be located, generally these involve turning the property over to the state first.
- cortesoft 8y ago
  It depends on the jurisdiction, but a lot of places have laws around found property... often a finder would have rights to truly abandoned property, but there are usually laws in place that establish a procedure for determining if something is truly abandoned or just lost/misplaced/stolen. Usually that process involves turning the property in to the government, and waiting some period of time for the original owner to claim it. If it is not claimed, it would become yours. I don't know of any law that requires property on public space to be locked. There may be laws saying you can't leave property in public for more than a certain amount of time, but I am pretty sure none of those would allow anyone to just take the property. https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/lost_property https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/lost_property https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/abandoned_property https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/abandoned_property
  - grkvlt 8y ago
    In the UK there is the crime of 'Theft by finding' [0] when you find something you think is abandoned and take it, but do not do anything to determine if it really was abandoned, as opposed to lost, unattended, etc. The Wikipedia article suggests similar offences exist elsewhere... 0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theft_by_finding https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theft_by_finding
- dragonwriter 8y ago
  > Let's say a (regular) scooter or even bicycle has been sitting on the sidewalk for a couple of days. Is it illegal for me to consider it abandoned and just take it? In California, if you find it and choose to take charge of it, you become a depositary for the legal owner. Additionally, if it is worth $100+, and you can't locate and return it to the owner within a reasonable period, you are required to turn it into the police or sheriff depending on the jurisdiction in which it was found. It may become yours if the owner doesn't claim it from the police/sheriff within 90 days, with some additional requirements if it is worth more than $250. If it was intentionally abandoned by the owner this doesn't apply. EDIT: Source, Civil Code § 2080 et seq..
  - gamblor956 8y ago
    The legal argument of course is that Bird has intentionally abandoned their scooters in the public way, and this is the general consensus of my many friends in the local DA offices. (Translation: they don't think it's a crime and they won't prosecute any such cases even if for some reason someone is ticketed or arrested for it.)
    - dragonwriter 8y ago
      > The legal argument of course is that Bird has intentionally abandoned their scooters in the public way, and this is the general consensus of my many friends in the local DA offices. (Translation: they don't think it's a crime and they won't prosecute any such cases even if for some reason someone is ticketed or arrested for it.) They clearly haven't abandoned them as that applies generally to property; if you are in fact charging rental fees, you haven't intentionally relinquished the right to control something, as you are exercising that right by charging others for the right to temporarily exercise some portion of it. There may be rules regarding public rights of way which impact this, though the US Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has already rejected the claim that property left unattended on a public sidewalk is therefore abandoned and subject to deprivation when the City of Los Angeles used that as an excuse to take the goods belonging to the homeless without due process, so I think what is really going on in those DAs offices is people have made the decision “we don't like what Bird is doing so we aren't going to enforce the law when people commit crimes against them.” https://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-9th-circuit/1611251.html https://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-9th-circuit/1611251.html
- rdiddly 8y ago
  On the one hand you have property rights, which some siblings of my current comment argue are inalienable concerning the scooter. "Don't touch my stuff!" On the other hand you have the ground occupied by or encumbered by said property, which is also property, owned by somebody, often the public, and likely intended for some other purpose besides storing your property. "Don't make your stuff our problem!" Different places balance the two interests in different ways. Most provide some legal framework or mechanism by which your private property rights can become subordinate to public property rights, i.e. your property is declared abandoned, or simply seized based on a nuisance or safety argument.
- arkades 8y ago
  The short version is: Every state has regulations on the exact process by which private individuals can be deprived of their property rights due to "abandonment." Not a single one of those regulations is as straight-forward as "finders keepers."
gamblor956 8y ago
No, because if a scooter is just left lying around on the street it is abandoned property and so generally there is no law against taking it. Which is the same problem that Bird is facing--in cities where they aren't actually permitted by the appropriate authority (city, county, etc.), Birds are abandoned property. In cities where they have been granted a permit to conduct business activities, the question is more nebulous, but thus far DAs are decisively on the side of not treating it as a crime.
- praneshp 8y ago
  > No, because if a scooter is just left lying around on the street it is abandoned property and so generally there is no law against taking it. Is there a citation for this in CA? can you just take abandoned property and claim it as yours without a single paperwork step?
  - lightedman 8y ago
    Abandoned property of California is found in a place where the owner intended to leave it. However, the condition of the property is such that it is unlikely that the owner intends to reclaim it. California abandoned property belongs to the finder. IOW, unless it is in bad/inoperable condition, you are not likely to get away with attempting to take one from the sidewalk. Just wait for the auction. For further info, contact the CA State Controller's Office, they handle abandoned property issues.
- tln 8y ago
  Are parked cars also abandoned then? I'm not so sure scooters with GPS tracking and contractors looking for them would be considered abandoned in the eyes of the law, even if they have been left in an unpermitted location.
  - CodeWriter23 8y ago
    Usually after a certain time frame, for example 3 days in LA, the car is considered abandoned. Fortunately my neighbors don’t dime me for those weeks I stay in code rushing.

peterwwillis 8y ago

Can you take a random UHaul truck off the street and keep it in your garage? You can find those things all around town.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

Balgair 8y ago

Look, I'm not gonna say that it's super-duper legal to do what you are saying. But (in SF at least) walking by Civic Center BART on Market Street, in broad daylight, you can gawk at least 10 homeless people per hour shooting up black tar heroin directly across from about five or more uniformed SFPD officers and then witness no arrests for such flagrant behavior [0]. Hell, if you've not seen a homeless person shit in the middle of the street on a Tuesday, you need to get out more. Like, Bird/Lime/whatever may be sending out these notices to Cory Doctorow's blogosphere Zeppelins [1], but ain't no cop in SF (and likely in nearly every other city in the US) is EVER going to prosecute you for making a cheapo scooter into a vase for growing your weeds in. Like every single other person that isn't on the books at these scoot companies (and ~90% of the people in them anyway), all members of the legal system have better things to worry about. [0] https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/A-Bay-Area-New-Year-s-resolution-fixing-the-13500968.php https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/A-Bay-Area-New-Y... [1] https://xkcd.com/345/ https://xkcd.com/345/

dcosson 8y ago

Wait til you learn about cars! People literally leave them all around the city, for hours or even days at a time. Completely unencumbered as well, and taking up prime public space that could be used by the public in so many other ways. You just need a jack and a tow truck, you can go around collecting as many as you want and keep them. They've been abandoned after all, because someone has walked away from them. (Obviously sarcasm, but as a non-car-owner I get a kick out of people freaking out about these scooters taking up public space. Meanwhile every street in the city is full of cars with one person in them and has two lanes of free or heavily subsidized parking. It's clearly a massively less efficient use of public space, and no one ever talks about that).

User23 8y ago
> You just need a jack and a tow truck, you can go around collecting as many as you want and keep them. They've been abandoned after all, because someone has walked away from them. As anyone who has had their car towed when it was legally parked (buddy of mine once got towed from his own assigned spot) this is pretty much spot on. The difference is so far Bird isn't ransoming their property back.
dman 8y ago
If people were leaving cars on sidewalks and beaches I could see similar levels of outrage.
ranrotx 8y ago
Car owners pay registration fees and and gas taxes for the privilege to use the public roadways. Bird and the like just dumped their property (which makes them money) on public right-of-ways without paying for the use like every other industry does.
- SECProto 8y ago
  That is not so easy to say, the division of taxes/cost vary by jurisdiction. Where I live, gas taxes go to provincial government which maintains only highways. Municipalities have to build/maintain urban roads, and their only funding source is property taxes (which are paid by everyone, regardless of car ownership (or scooter club membership))

notatoad 8y ago

Apparently people don't like the cars argument, so let's try bikes instead. If I leave my bike locked up outside somewhere, and you cut my lock and take it home, that's theft. You can't just steal bikes because they've been left on public land. My property doesn't cease to be my property just because it isn't on my land. Registration or licencing doesn't come into it. "Finders keepers" is not a law.

test6554 8y ago
Yea, people who know of property rights can get pretty disgusted at people who don't.
vanderZwan 8y ago
See my comment here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18890622 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18890622
twtw 8y ago
> You can't just steal bikes because they've been left on public land What is the anticipated solution when you leave your bike on my private land? I've seen loads of bird scooters left on private property, and I don't see what the property owners are supposed to do. Call the police every time?
- notatoad 8y ago
  If somebody has abandoned their property on your property and you want it gone, you can move it off your property. But it still doesn't become yours, and you definitely don't need to call the police about it. Going back to the car analogy, if i park my car in your private parking lot, you can have it towed. It doesn't become your car. Same with a bike - you can move it off your property, but you can't steal it, because that would be stealing. Is there some sort of mental block happening here where people are forgetting how the world works because they hate scooters so much, or do you guys really not understand the fundamentals of property law and common sense?
  - 8y ago

olalonde 8y ago

In the unlikely case this was a genuine question, property law.

social_quotient 8y ago

I think the key issue is around “abandonment” which requires a bit of “intent”. These guys intend to go and pick these up. The same is true for a car as other pointed out but more importantly when I park my car I intend for it to be where I left it. “In law, abandonment is the relinquishment, giving up or renunciation of an interest, claim, civil proceedings, appeal, privilege, possession, or right, especially with the intent of never again resuming or reasserting it. Such intentional action may take the form of a discontinuance or a waiver.“ -It would make cool artwork! -I dislike seeing scooters strewn about all over the city.

ClassyJacket 8y ago

Probably the same law that covers other thefts?

kragen 8y ago

I'm definitely not going to leave my laptop on the table while I go to the bathroom if you're in the café. And I'm definitely not going to invite you into my office or my house, ever.