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I'm a little bit confused - it seems obvious to me that Uber is running an unlicensed dispatch service. What's their argument here? http://search.municode.com/

I'm a little bit confused - it seems obvious to me that Uber is running an unlicensed dispatch service. What's their argument here? http://search.municode.com/html/14143/level2/DIVII_ART1100REMOVEHI.html http://search.municode.com/html/14143/level2/DIVII_ART1100RE...

bittermang 15y ago
That they're being disruptive and they're hip so they should be allowed to do it.
- johnrob 15y ago
  I detect sarcasm, and I agree to the extent that the public debate on this matter is sorely lacking any analysis of why the laws in question exist. Both sides of the argument seem guilty of this.
  - uvdiv 15y ago
    "Public debate"? I pay a cabbie, s/he drives me, it's a private matter between the two of us. It's not the public's business to debate! The horrific notion of criminalizing a consensual economic intercourse between two adults -- with prison penalties, at that -- isn't an issue of democratic politics, but of basic rights.
    - anigbrowl 15y ago
      Oh get real Uvdiv. The idea of taxi licensing is that you can identify a cab on the street and get from A to B without any serious worries about being assaulted or held up for hundreds of dollars at the end of the journey. Somehow I doubt that if you ended up having to pay $250 for a short ride in someone's car that you'd just treat it as a regular business transaction instead of calling the police. Addressing a problem by going to the opposite extreme is just foolish. There's a reason that most people wouldn't feel safe accepting a ride from a random stranger, and why children are taught not to do it from an early age. Hint: it's not fear of capitalism.
      - uvdiv 15y ago
        "The idea of taxi licensing is that you can identify a cab on the street and get from A to B without any serious worries about..." But that is not the idea of taxi "licensing" as it exists. It doesn't merely regulate taxi driving; it prohibits it altogether, outside of a protected group. It's not licensing, but cartel enforcement. Its aim isn't protecting the safety of the public, but protecting the business monopoly of the taxi industry. Uber isn't prohibited from operating taxis because they're unsafe, uninsured, or unwilling to subject themselves to registration, inspection, insurance, background checks, or whatever "public safety" requires. They're banned simply because they are competition. And this has nothing to do with public safety!
        anigbrowl 15y ago
        When I say 'the idea of' I'm talking about the ideal, not the actuality. You can see from this thread that I have an overwhelmingly negative view of the actual implementation here in SF.
      - jrockway 15y ago
        If it were about safety, they wouldn't be driving a hundred miles an hour down residential streets, and there wouldn't be a finite number of medallions. Let's use another regulated field as an analogy: medicine. You have to receive extensive training and receive government certification in order to become a doctor. This is to protect your future patients against someone who knows nothing about medicine, which we can all agree is fair. Here's the difference between being a cab driver and a doctor: if you are qualified to be a doctor, you can be a doctor. But to be a cab driver, you have to buy an arbitrary license from the government of which there are only a finite number of. You could be the safest most wonderful driver in the world, but without that arbitrary piece of metal bolted to your car, it's illegal for you to drive anyone around. Medallions are not about safety. They are a government subsidy for cab drivers.
        deleted 15y ago
        [deleted]
        15y ago
    - jasonwocky 15y ago
      > The horrific notion of criminalizing a consensual economic intercourse between two adults... Was that intended to be a double-entendre?
enki 15y ago
they aren't dispatching taxis here's the relevant passage: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/22117/tcp_and_taxicab_distinguished.png http://dl.dropbox.com/u/22117/tcp_and_taxicab_distinguished.... (source: http://www.cpuc.ca.gov/NR/rdonlyres/D5E763FD-5706-4F7D-9F95-1DE383C4F92C/0/BasicInformationforPassengerCarriersandApplicantsRev012811.pdf http://www.cpuc.ca.gov/NR/rdonlyres/D5E763FD-5706-4F7D-9F95-... ) (limousines which are passenger carriers regulated by CPUC aren't licensed to be hailed from the curb, but can perform prearranged transportation)
- mikeryan 15y ago
  Yes but local laws can supersede state ones on this. ie it can be legal in Modesto but illegal in SF. SF Definition of a Dispatch Service: Dispatch Service" shall mean any person, business, firm, partnership, association or corporation that receives communications from the public regarding taxi service for the purpose of forwarding such communications to motor vehicle for hire drivers, and shall include any owner, manager, employee, lessee and any agent of said service. "Dispatch Service" shall not include any service through which the public is able to communicate directly with Drivers, and shall not include any effort on the part of a Driver to market his or her services to the public.
  - enki 15y ago
    SF Definition of Taxi: "Taxi" shall mean a vehicle operated pursuant to a Taxi or Ramp Taxi Medallion that is legally authorized to pick up passengers within the City with or without prearrangement, of a distinctive color or colors and which is operated at rates per mile or upon a waiting-time basis, or both, as measured by a Taximeter and which is used for the transportation of passengers for hire over and along the public streets, not over a defined route but, as to the route and destination, in accordance with and under the direction of the passenger or person hiring such vehicle. "as measured by a Taximeter", "for hire over and along the public streets" Because TCP's are legal in SF, and Uber can prearrange trips in a legal fashion using them, and there's no special law that applies to Uber only, in theory Uber should be able to operate legally. Technicalities like whether the trips are fully prearranged (pick-up AND drop-off) might come into play, but these are details they could fix. IANAL, but from what I've seen, If ordering a TCP via the internet is legal, ordering a TCP via the internet using Uber is also legal.
bh42222 15y ago
Anyone know why they can't get licensed in every city? Or is something preventing them form doing that, because licensing is inherently a way to protect old cartels from new cheaper/better upstarts?
- uvdiv 15y ago
  Taxis are state-sanctioned cartels in many cities. The number of "licenses" (medallions) is capped to inflate the revenues of existing businesses. In San Francisco (where Uber's legal problems are), the quota is ~1,400, and there's a waiting list more than 10 years long to get a "license". http://www.medallionholders.com/medallions.html http://www.medallionholders.com/medallions.html (n.b. this is cartel-funded propaganda) http://www.sfweekly.com/2010-01-27/news/cabbies-cry-foul-over-plan-to-sell-medallions/ http://www.sfweekly.com/2010-01-27/news/cabbies-cry-foul-ove... It's exactly what it looks like: they've criminalized competition. You get prison for "stealing" business from union thugs.
  - anigbrowl 15y ago
    This cartel appears to be the product of a joint effort between the taxi corporations and the drivers union. I don't hear the cab firms arguing for greater competition or an increase in the number of taxis either.
- jdp23 15y ago
  Yes, licensing requirements generally protect incumbents. In SF (and I assume other large cities) it's very political.
jdp23 15y ago
seems like a great example of the line between "naughtiness" and "evil" being discussed yesterday in http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2580458 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2580458 ... if a law gets in the way of your innovative business plan, should you just ignore it?
- jtbigwoo 15y ago
  There are certainly times when unjust laws should be ignored. However, when one ignores the law one should be prepared to suffer the consequences of his actions. Uber's CEO is clearly not prepared to suffer those consequences.
  - alexqgb 15y ago
    The immediate consequence is a trial, not necessarily a conviction, which may or may not follow. The CEO (and just as importantly, his backers) seem entirely prepared to run this risk. One of the abiding virtues of due process is that it's public. In the event that a cartel captures a regulatory agency, and turns it against the people it's supposed to serve, a system of open justice will force them to fight for their odious privilege in full view of the press. The risk - for the cartel - is that the trial will backfire by spotlighting just how corrupt and abusive their underlying legal supports have become. Even if they do win in court, the victory my by Pyrrhic. In the absence of a clear (and superior) alternative, the arguments that supported the initial regulatory capture may still carry some weight with an otherwise ambivalent public. In these cases, private acts of cartel-busting may be truly foolish. But in cases like Uber or Airbnb - where the public can not only see the alternative clearly, it can download it as a wildly useful app - it becomes exponentially harder to strangle genuine progress. Extreme and widespread dissatisfaction with the norm (which is very much the case with SF Taxi service) makes aggressive legal suppression even riskier - especially when cash-strapped states and municipalities can be convinced that the new market is big enough to substantially augment their tax bases. None of this means that the overt cartel-busting approach to business development isn't risky as hell. It is. But timed correctly, and supported by the right technological breakthroughs, it can pay off spectacularly. If anyone deserves the entrepreneur-as-hero laurels, it's these guys.
jrockway 15y ago
They're just the messengers. If the newspaper published an article saying "jrockway needs a ride from 123 Green St at 2PM", that's free speech. So why is it a problem if a website does it? Anyway, I see a simple solution to San Francisco's laws: run the site out of Libya or something. Pretty sure there's nothing San Francisco can do about that, except start cracking down on the users (but oops, who aren't doing anything illegal).

bittermang 15y ago

That they're being disruptive and they're hip so they should be allowed to do it.

johnrob 15y ago
I detect sarcasm, and I agree to the extent that the public debate on this matter is sorely lacking any analysis of why the laws in question exist. Both sides of the argument seem guilty of this.
- uvdiv 15y ago
  "Public debate"? I pay a cabbie, s/he drives me, it's a private matter between the two of us. It's not the public's business to debate! The horrific notion of criminalizing a consensual economic intercourse between two adults -- with prison penalties, at that -- isn't an issue of democratic politics, but of basic rights.
  - anigbrowl 15y ago
    Oh get real Uvdiv. The idea of taxi licensing is that you can identify a cab on the street and get from A to B without any serious worries about being assaulted or held up for hundreds of dollars at the end of the journey. Somehow I doubt that if you ended up having to pay $250 for a short ride in someone's car that you'd just treat it as a regular business transaction instead of calling the police. Addressing a problem by going to the opposite extreme is just foolish. There's a reason that most people wouldn't feel safe accepting a ride from a random stranger, and why children are taught not to do it from an early age. Hint: it's not fear of capitalism.
    - uvdiv 15y ago
      "The idea of taxi licensing is that you can identify a cab on the street and get from A to B without any serious worries about..." But that is not the idea of taxi "licensing" as it exists. It doesn't merely regulate taxi driving; it prohibits it altogether, outside of a protected group. It's not licensing, but cartel enforcement. Its aim isn't protecting the safety of the public, but protecting the business monopoly of the taxi industry. Uber isn't prohibited from operating taxis because they're unsafe, uninsured, or unwilling to subject themselves to registration, inspection, insurance, background checks, or whatever "public safety" requires. They're banned simply because they are competition. And this has nothing to do with public safety!
      - anigbrowl 15y ago
        When I say 'the idea of' I'm talking about the ideal, not the actuality. You can see from this thread that I have an overwhelmingly negative view of the actual implementation here in SF.
    - jrockway 15y ago
      If it were about safety, they wouldn't be driving a hundred miles an hour down residential streets, and there wouldn't be a finite number of medallions. Let's use another regulated field as an analogy: medicine. You have to receive extensive training and receive government certification in order to become a doctor. This is to protect your future patients against someone who knows nothing about medicine, which we can all agree is fair. Here's the difference between being a cab driver and a doctor: if you are qualified to be a doctor, you can be a doctor. But to be a cab driver, you have to buy an arbitrary license from the government of which there are only a finite number of. You could be the safest most wonderful driver in the world, but without that arbitrary piece of metal bolted to your car, it's illegal for you to drive anyone around. Medallions are not about safety. They are a government subsidy for cab drivers.
      - deleted 15y ago
        [deleted]
      - 15y ago
  - jasonwocky 15y ago
    > The horrific notion of criminalizing a consensual economic intercourse between two adults... Was that intended to be a double-entendre?

enki 15y ago

they aren't dispatching taxis here's the relevant passage: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/22117/tcp_and_taxicab_distinguished.png http://dl.dropbox.com/u/22117/tcp_and_taxicab_distinguished.... (source: http://www.cpuc.ca.gov/NR/rdonlyres/D5E763FD-5706-4F7D-9F95-1DE383C4F92C/0/BasicInformationforPassengerCarriersandApplicantsRev012811.pdf http://www.cpuc.ca.gov/NR/rdonlyres/D5E763FD-5706-4F7D-9F95-... ) (limousines which are passenger carriers regulated by CPUC aren't licensed to be hailed from the curb, but can perform prearranged transportation)

mikeryan 15y ago
Yes but local laws can supersede state ones on this. ie it can be legal in Modesto but illegal in SF. SF Definition of a Dispatch Service: Dispatch Service" shall mean any person, business, firm, partnership, association or corporation that receives communications from the public regarding taxi service for the purpose of forwarding such communications to motor vehicle for hire drivers, and shall include any owner, manager, employee, lessee and any agent of said service. "Dispatch Service" shall not include any service through which the public is able to communicate directly with Drivers, and shall not include any effort on the part of a Driver to market his or her services to the public.
- enki 15y ago
  SF Definition of Taxi: "Taxi" shall mean a vehicle operated pursuant to a Taxi or Ramp Taxi Medallion that is legally authorized to pick up passengers within the City with or without prearrangement, of a distinctive color or colors and which is operated at rates per mile or upon a waiting-time basis, or both, as measured by a Taximeter and which is used for the transportation of passengers for hire over and along the public streets, not over a defined route but, as to the route and destination, in accordance with and under the direction of the passenger or person hiring such vehicle. "as measured by a Taximeter", "for hire over and along the public streets" Because TCP's are legal in SF, and Uber can prearrange trips in a legal fashion using them, and there's no special law that applies to Uber only, in theory Uber should be able to operate legally. Technicalities like whether the trips are fully prearranged (pick-up AND drop-off) might come into play, but these are details they could fix. IANAL, but from what I've seen, If ordering a TCP via the internet is legal, ordering a TCP via the internet using Uber is also legal.

bh42222 15y ago

Anyone know why they can't get licensed in every city? Or is something preventing them form doing that, because licensing is inherently a way to protect old cartels from new cheaper/better upstarts?

uvdiv 15y ago
Taxis are state-sanctioned cartels in many cities. The number of "licenses" (medallions) is capped to inflate the revenues of existing businesses. In San Francisco (where Uber's legal problems are), the quota is ~1,400, and there's a waiting list more than 10 years long to get a "license". http://www.medallionholders.com/medallions.html http://www.medallionholders.com/medallions.html (n.b. this is cartel-funded propaganda) http://www.sfweekly.com/2010-01-27/news/cabbies-cry-foul-over-plan-to-sell-medallions/ http://www.sfweekly.com/2010-01-27/news/cabbies-cry-foul-ove... It's exactly what it looks like: they've criminalized competition. You get prison for "stealing" business from union thugs.
- anigbrowl 15y ago
  This cartel appears to be the product of a joint effort between the taxi corporations and the drivers union. I don't hear the cab firms arguing for greater competition or an increase in the number of taxis either.
jdp23 15y ago
Yes, licensing requirements generally protect incumbents. In SF (and I assume other large cities) it's very political.

jdp23 15y ago

seems like a great example of the line between "naughtiness" and "evil" being discussed yesterday in http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2580458 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2580458 ... if a law gets in the way of your innovative business plan, should you just ignore it?

jtbigwoo 15y ago
There are certainly times when unjust laws should be ignored. However, when one ignores the law one should be prepared to suffer the consequences of his actions. Uber's CEO is clearly not prepared to suffer those consequences.
- alexqgb 15y ago
  The immediate consequence is a trial, not necessarily a conviction, which may or may not follow. The CEO (and just as importantly, his backers) seem entirely prepared to run this risk. One of the abiding virtues of due process is that it's public. In the event that a cartel captures a regulatory agency, and turns it against the people it's supposed to serve, a system of open justice will force them to fight for their odious privilege in full view of the press. The risk - for the cartel - is that the trial will backfire by spotlighting just how corrupt and abusive their underlying legal supports have become. Even if they do win in court, the victory my by Pyrrhic. In the absence of a clear (and superior) alternative, the arguments that supported the initial regulatory capture may still carry some weight with an otherwise ambivalent public. In these cases, private acts of cartel-busting may be truly foolish. But in cases like Uber or Airbnb - where the public can not only see the alternative clearly, it can download it as a wildly useful app - it becomes exponentially harder to strangle genuine progress. Extreme and widespread dissatisfaction with the norm (which is very much the case with SF Taxi service) makes aggressive legal suppression even riskier - especially when cash-strapped states and municipalities can be convinced that the new market is big enough to substantially augment their tax bases. None of this means that the overt cartel-busting approach to business development isn't risky as hell. It is. But timed correctly, and supported by the right technological breakthroughs, it can pay off spectacularly. If anyone deserves the entrepreneur-as-hero laurels, it's these guys.

jrockway 15y ago

They're just the messengers. If the newspaper published an article saying "jrockway needs a ride from 123 Green St at 2PM", that's free speech. So why is it a problem if a website does it? Anyway, I see a simple solution to San Francisco's laws: run the site out of Libya or something. Pretty sure there's nothing San Francisco can do about that, except start cracking down on the users (but oops, who aren't doing anything illegal).