Texas Can't Get Its Innovation Act Together: Fails To Pass Bills To Let Tesla & Uber Provide Service

from the corruption-index dept

Last year, we wrote about two key "corruption indicators" in city and state governments: they ban direct sales models to block Tesla from competing with traditional car companies and they ban Uber/Lyft style car hailing services to protect local taxi incumbents.

It appears that Texas is really trying to wave its anti-innovation flag as strongly as possible as the legislature down there failed to move forward on two key bills that would have made it possible for Tesla to do direct sales in Texas... and to stop local cities from blocking Uber & Lyft to favor taxi incumbents.

A Texas House deadline has come and gone, killing many top-priority bills for both parties — among them one that would allow Tesla-backed direct car sales and another to regulate ride-hailing companies. Midnight Thursday was the last chance for House bills to win initial, full-chamber approval. Since any proposal can be tacked onto other bills as amendments, no measure is completely dead until the legislative session ends June 1. But even with such resurrections, actually becoming state law now gets far tougher.

And, of course, this comes just after the FTC warned Michigan for its blocking of direct sales of cars like Tesla.

The failure to allow direct sales is a much bigger deal than the car hailing stuff, but both are bad. And the response from Texas politicians is really quite disgusting:

Rep. Senfronia Thompson — one of the House's most senior members currently serving her 20th term — said it was the company's own fault that the bill didn't pass.

"I can appreciate Tesla wanting to sell cars, but I think it would have been wiser if Mr. Tesla had sat down with the car dealers first," she said.

Really? In what world is it considered appropriate to force an innovative company that wants to go direct to consumers to first "sit down" with the gatekeepers that are trying to block them? "I can appreciate Amazon wanting to sell books to people, but I think it would have been wiser if Mr. Amazon had sat down with retail store builders first." "I can appreciate YouTube wanting to let anyone upload videos, but I think it would have been wiser if Mr. YouTube had sat down with TV producers first."

That's not how innovation works. At all. And thus, we can cross Texas off the list of innovative states.

The law around car hailing is not quite as big of a deal, but without the new Texas law, various cities within Texas can still create their own rules that would effectively make it impossible for such services to operate there. There are states that create spaces for innovation -- and then there are those that protect incumbents. Texas appears to be making it clear that it's the latter. If I were a startup in Austin, I might consider finding somewhere else to operate.

Filed Under: car hailing, corruption, direct sales, electric cars, regulations, ride sharing, senfronia thompson, texas
Companies: lyft, tesla, uber

NYC Taxi And Limo Commission Looks To Regulate All Ride Hailing Services

from the because-that's-how-innovation-works dept

Whatever you might think of Uber in terms of its attitude and practices (and, really, people feel this weird need to rant on about such feelings, but that's unrelated to the point of this post -- so no need to tell everyone), you can't really deny that it has truly revolutionized the way that many people are able to get around in a variety of metropolitan areas. And Uber and its various competitors have done this by building a better system that is much more convenient and easy to use, and actually using much more realistic market forces, rather than doing silly things like artificially limiting the number of taxi medallions to keep taxi services scarce and expensive.

Of course, the old beneficiaries of the system, have hit back any way they can. As we've written repeatedly, various cab companies and bureaucrats seem to go out of their way to attack such ride sharing services. The typical go-to claim from those hating on ride hailing services is that because they're less regulated, they're more subject to fraud and abuse or unsafe driving conditions. There is, however, little evidence to back that up. While there are some anecdotal stories of bad ride hailing drivers, we're already seeing innovative ways to deal with that. For example, in India, Uber recently added an emergency button to its app, which would directly alert police if a rider was in trouble.

In short, what we've seen is that, through innovation, competition and (most importantly) an abundance of information, a better overall result can occur. The reasons for many taxi regulations in the past was because of clear information asymmetry: taxi drivers could (and frequently did) screw over passengers, because there was basically no recourse. There was no way for a rider to know if the driver was safe or not, and (more importantly) no real way for that rider to then warn future passengers. But ride hailing services changed that in a big way by flipping the equation, and allowing a good way to rate drivers and to create incentives for those drivers to do a good job. It's not perfect, but, frankly, my own experience in using Uber and Lyft has been that the overall experience has been much, much better than using a traditional cab.

In New York City -- a place where cabs have long been limited by its famous medallion system -- there's been a struggle to deal with this innovative change. Just last year, we wrote about the Taxi and Limousine Commission declaring Lyft to be illegal. And, a few months ago, a NYC politician proposed a bill that would require the TLC to create its own Uber-like app. Because, apparently, innovation works by having the government mandate another part of the government copy an innovative company?

Either way, the TLC is now looking to go even further, in proposing new rules that say that basically any ride hailing app should be fully regulated by the NYC TLC and including a bunch of conditions that really don't seem necessary. Some of them just seem like relics from a previous era that are there because they were there in the past. It's difficult to see why that makes any sense. And then there are new requirements that also seem bizarre. Like this:

The website and/or smartphone application must provide Passengers, upon request, with an estimate of the total fare, inclusive of all fees and any price multiplier or variable pricing policy in effect, for the ride.

I can see how that would be a nice feature to have, but should it be required by the government? If Uber doesn't provide that and Lyft does, then isn't that just a competitive advantage for Lyft? And, really, do existing taxi systems already do that beyond a driver tossing out a random estimate off the top of his head on how much it will cost to go somewhere?

Then there's something really concerning: buried in the rules is the idea that drivers can only work for one provider at a time. I've seen many drivers that work for both Lyft and Uber (and sometimes others as well). Specifically, the rules have a "one device" rule -- saying drivers can only use a single device at a time, but many drivers that I've seen who work for multiple services have separate devices (and some, like Uber, will offer to rent you a special phone just for being an Uber driver, if you don't want to/can't use your own phone).

A Base Owner must not dispatch a For-Hire Vehicle that is equipped with more than one electronic device in addition to the dispatch equipment required by the Vehicle’s affiliated Base...

Again, I'm sure the TLC would argue that this is for safety reasons. Elsewhere in the document it suggests that by arguing that this single device cannot be handheld:

a For-Hire Vehicle may be equipped with one electronic device that is used to accept dispatches from a Base or FHV Dispatch Application, provided that that the device is mounted in a fixed position and not hand-held and use of the electronic device is limited to either voice or one-touch preprogrammed buttons or keys while the Vehicle is in motion.

And, sure, you can reasonably worry about the driving safety of someone who has multiple such devices, though I've seen plenty of drivers with two or three phones lined up in a way that seems perfectly reasonable.

The more glaring concern here, though, is that such a rule basically locks in the incumbents and harms the upstarts. If a driver can't drive for Uber and a new ride hailing startup, they're likely to just stick with Uber, and the upstarts get cut out. That's a problem. Even if that's not the intention, it's these kinds of regulations that all too often lock things in so that incumbents stay in power, while startups are blocked.

Furthermore, just the idea that any new service in this space has to now go and plead with the TLC to get "licensed" is going to slow and limit the opportunities for new and innovative players in this space. Uber got to where it was by building a useful service, not having to ask local bureaucrats for permission every time. The next generation of companies looking to reinvent the space won't be so lucky -- and that may mean we all suffer.

Filed Under: new york, new york city, regulations, ride hailing
Companies: lyft, sidecar, uber

California Taxi Companies Team Up To Sue Uber For 'False Advertising'

from the how-about-just-competing? dept

The week of attacks on Uber continue. We already noted the problems the company was having in South Korea and France, and around the time that went up, Uber got banned in Germany. And then, a bunch of California taxi cab companies teamed up to sue Uber, claiming Uber is engaging in deceptive advertising by claiming that its safer than a taxi. The companies are particularly annoyed with the fact that Uber charges a "safe rides fee" but it's not clear if the company actually uses that money for safety purposes. As with similar lawsuits in other cities, it's difficult to see how this is anything more than sour grapes against a company that is serving customers better.

Uber certainly has its issues, but the arguments that cab companies make against it just seem like the kind of thing competitors who don't want to compete make against the hot new thing. Whatever happened to just competing by building a better service, rather than suing? When I get into any kind of car -- whether driven by myself, a family member, a friend, an Uber driver or a taxi driver, I know that there's some amount of risk involved. That's the nature of getting into a car. I don't think that an Uber driver is any safer, even when I do pay the $1 "safety" fee. I use services like Uber and Lyft for their convenience, not because there's any magical formula for safety. So, when the cabbies make this argument, it just rings hollow:

These statements actually deceive, or have the tendency to deceive, customers into believing that riders who pay this $1 per ride fee to use UberX are safer than if they chose transportation via a taxi cab. Because this “Safe Rides Fee” is a separate line item on the receipt that Uber issues to customers, this bolsters the consumers’ expectation that they should be receiving the safest ride possible. Put differently, considering that Uber explicitly specifies that this is an additional safety fee, it is reasonable for consumers to expect that they will be receiving a ride safer than that provided by Plaintiffs’ taxi cabs, as Plaintiffs’ taxicabs simply charge a total fare, without imposing any additional surcharge to ensure a “Safe Ride.”

No. I use Uber and I don't think that by paying $1 I'm any safer. But I do think that Uber, like any company, recognizes that having happy customers is important, and that includes making sure that drivers do a good job -- which, for the most part they do. I don't need some extra level of regulation that limits the competition, but doesn't actually make me any safer. I prefer a system where drivers actually compete to do a good job, knowing that if they don't they may get a bad rating and kicked out of the system. Uber works because of competition, and it's that simple fact that has these taxi companies so upset.

Filed Under: cab hailing, california, false advertising, ride sharing, safety
Companies: uber

Uber Having A Tough Week Overseas: France And South Korea Crack Down

from the can't-get-too-popular dept

It's been pretty clear for a while that Uber, the super popular (if sometimes controversial) car-hailing service, has often courted regulatory conflict as a sort of marketing strategy. In cities around the globe, often the best way to get the public to realize that Uber was a convenient alternative to dreaded taxis was to have the local taxi commission/transportation board/whatever announce that whatever the company was doing was illegal. This would cue a blog post or email from the company, and thousands of (previously) happy but (now) annoyed Uber users to flood the government with complaints. Frequently, this would lead to the bureaucrats backing down quickly, and Uber getting a ton of "free" publicity. However, it appears that some places are simply ratcheting up the legal attacks on the company.

Last year, we noted that South Korea was threatening to put Uber CEO Travis Kalanick in jail for offering an "illegal" taxi service, and it appears that the country isn't backing down. Kalanick and dozens of others (not just from Uber) have now been charged with operating an "illegal taxi ring" in South Korea. This round includes additional charges against Kalanick, who has wisely been staying out of South Korea for the time being, though the country plans to seek a warrant to have him arrested.

"We plan to summon Kalanick soon and check the transaction details of overseas bank accounts to conduct further investigation into those involved in the case," a police official said, speaking on condition of anonymity. "If Kalanick continues to disobey the summons, we plan to seek an arrest warrant against him."

Meanwhile, over in France, the police have raided Uber's offices:

French police raided Uber's office in Paris this week, as part of an investigation into its controversial UberPop service. According to French media reports, 25 officers raided Uber's headquarters for six hours on Monday, seizing emails, documents, and smartphones used by Uber drivers.

The company's low-cost UberPop service has been at the center of ongoing controversy in France, where authorities deemed it illegal under a new law that went into effect on January 1st. The law requires all chauffeurs to be licensed and insured — conditions that, according to French authorities, UberPop does not meet. Uber insists that the service is legal under French law, and has filed appeals with the European Commission. UberPop, which connects clients with non-professional drivers, remains available in France, though some 250 chauffeurs have been fined since the beginning of the year, according to FranceInfo.

Again, whether or not you approve of some of Uber's marketing practices (or its privacy or pricing policies), that shouldn't take away from the simple fact that it has actually created a tremendously useful service, enabling easier and often cheaper transportation for many people in a variety of urban areas. It's a powerful service, and it's difficult to see these recent legal attacks as anything more than blatant protectionism of existing taxi cartels that artificially keep prices high while providing generally sub-par service.

Filed Under: car hailing, france, ride haling, ride sharing, south korea, taxis, travis kalanick
Companies: uber

Judge Denies Uber's Motion To Dismiss, Sets Up Jury Trial For 'Employees Or Independent Contractors?' Question

from the innovation-through-jurisprudence? dept

In a decision that's sure to be applauded by Uber's opponents, Judge Edward Chen has denied the ride-sharing company's request to declare its drivers independent contractors. If Uber is forced to suddenly take thousands of employees on board, along with the added expenses and liabilities such a move would entail, it's going to have a much harder time maintaining -- much less expanding -- a service that many people find preferable to the taxicab strangleholds present in many cities.

In denying the company's motion for summary judgment, Chen calls Uber out for the "narrow framing" of its "we're an app, not a company" assertions, but notes that Uber does grant its drivers enough leeway that the question cannot be completely resolved via a motion in his court. Chen also raises the spectre of further regulation -- something that's similarly unlikely to work out in Uber's favor.

The application of the traditional test of employment – a test which evolved under an economic model very different from the new “sharing economy” – to Uber’s business model creates significant challenges. Arguably, many of the factors in that test appear outmoded in this context. Other factors, which might arguably be reflective of the current economic realities (such as the proportion of revenues generated and shared by the respective parties, their relative bargaining power, and the range of alternatives available to each), are not expressly encompassed by the Borello test. It may be that the legislature or appellate courts may eventually refine or revise that test in the context of the new economy. It is conceivable that the legislature would enact rules particular to the new so-called “sharing economy.”

And then sends the case on its way to a jury trial, something he notes earlier is the only way to resolve an issue this complex. No precedent is set or will be set, at least not in Chen's court.

Until then, this Court is tasked with applying the traditional multifactor test of Borello and its progeny to the facts at hand. For the reasons stated above, apart from the preliminary finding that Uber drivers are presumptive employees, the Borello test does not yield an unambiguous result. The matter cannot on this record be decided as a matter of law. Uber’s motion for summary judgment is therefore denied.

This order disposes of Docket No. 211.

So, a case that has been running since August of 2013 may still be months away from a resolution. Uber's inability to get the suit tossed doesn't necessarily mean it's destined to become Yet Another Cab Company. It still has options, but it also has an uphill battle against plenty of incumbents… and the politicians who prefer what they know to unfamiliar market entrants.

Filed Under: contractors, employees, gig economy, labor, ridesharing
Companies: lyft, uber

Cabs Strike In Chicago Against Uber; Uber Drivers Presumably Report Uptick In Business

from the beep-beep dept

For a couple of years now, Chicago taxi companies have been making all kinds of noise in an attempt to keep Uber and other ridesharing services from disrupting the marketplace. The whole thing has been a fairly transparent case of a jealous legacy player in an industry not loving a disruptive newcomer. That said, there's precious little validity in a claim against a city or competitor that mostly amounts to: "But I really like all that money I was making."

Not that such a lack of validity is keeping Chicago's taxi services from waving their arms around in an attempt to get attention. The most recent futile event was a staged mini-strike in Chicago's downtown area (actually, directly below my office), during which cabbies refused to pick up fares and instead drove around the loop honking their horns the entire time.

Many cabbies drove through downtown for four hours Tuesday morning, refusing to pick up fares. Dozens of cabs drive in circles around City Hall and the Daley Center for more than an hour, honking their horns to draw attention. Many cabbies had posted protest signs in their windows, accusing Uber of stealing their customers.

“It’s good music to my ears,” said cab driver Rocky Mmomo, a steering committee member of the United Taxidrivers Community Council. Mmomo said cabbies want the tax industry deregulated, so it can better compete with Uber and the other ride-sharing companies.

A couple items to note here. First, don't be fooled by old Rocky's claim that they just want the cab companies to be deregulated so they can be on a level playing field with Uber drivers. What isn't mentioned here is the obvious problem with that line of thinking: Uber's service and livery services aren't really the same thing, so the same regulations don't apply. A full-time taxi driver employed by a taxi service that pays for the medallion and proper livery license is a far cry from an Uber driver who does a little people-shipping during his or her off hours. They're just not the same thing and pretending they are won't get anyone anywhere.

And the city of Chicago, for its part, is licensing Uber based on what it actually is.

On Monday, the city agreed to issue a “transportation network provider” license to Uber, after negotiations led to a promise from Uber to provide more stringent safety measures than required by the city’s ride-sharing ordinance. Uber competitors Lyft and Sidecar were granted similar licenses three months ago.

Again, as you can see, Uber and ridesharing service providers aren't cab companies. Pretending they are doesn't make any sense. But that's what the legacy cab companies want. And you can tell that's all they want by their arguments for deregulation.

“We’ll be sitting at a hotel for two, three hours; and all of a sudden you see three UberX cabs just came and picked up customers while we’re just sitting there. How is that fair? That’s not fair to a cab driver,” cab driver Mustafa Husein said.

Forgive me, sir, but who the hell ever promised you fairness when it comes to competing in a changing business marketplace? The very nature of disruptive business models are to be "unfair" to the legacy models so as to build a more efficient product and happier customers. That's the entire point. I'm fairly certain nobody promised cabbies a living, after all. So honk away, guys. I'm sure Uber drivers are happy to pick up those fares you refuse.

Filed Under: chicago, protest, strike, taxi drivers, taxis
Companies: uber

Judges May Deflate Massive Opportunity By Declaring Uber, Lyft Drivers 'Employees' Rather Than Independent Contractors

from the this-won't-help-anyone dept

There are two big lawsuits that had hearings last week in California concerning how the car hailing (since some people get upset at the term "ride sharing") services Lyft and Uber operate. Both companies insist that what they provide is, in effect, a service marketplace, in which buyers (riders) and sellers (drivers) can connect (at preset prices) for rides. Under such a setup, the drivers have always been considered independent contractors who are using Lyft and Uber to find riders. Yet in both of these lawsuits drivers are trying to get themselves declared employees of the company, rather than independent contractors. So far, that argument seems to be winning as Judge Vincent Chhabria in the Lyft case on Thursday and Judge Edward Chen in the Uber case on Friday indicated that the drivers have a strong case.

In the press, many have focused on the emails that were revealed in the Uber case (which Uber sought to block, claiming they were trade secrets), in which Uber employees gleefully and profanely discuss banning bad drivers. The drivers argue that this shows that Uber had the ability to terminate their employment, making them more like employees. But that doesn't make much sense, and if true, it could present problems for all sorts of online services. Plenty of sites, from eBay to Yelp to Twitter all involve outside users making use of their platform -- where the companies have the right to terminate their use of the platform, but that doesn't make the users "employees."

The IRS Guidelines on the difference between an independent contractor and an employee, under my reading, seem to clearly indicate these drivers are independent contractors. They set their own hours. They provide their own equipment. They decide how to go about completing the job.

This case, in many ways, reminds me of similar attempts to have independent users declared employees. Not too long ago, some Yelp reviewers sought to be declared employees. And, back in 1999, a bunch of AOL volunteer chat room monitors sued to be declared employees of AOL. AOL eventually paid up to settle that lawsuit, but all of these kinds of cases threaten internet platforms like these. When users of those platforms can suddenly demand to be called employees -- with all of the related salary and benefits associated with such, it creates tremendous liability for these platforms, and makes the entire internet, and the various services it provides less useful.

The drivers in these cases are relying on a recent precedent of FedEx drivers being declared employees, rather than independent contractors, but in that case, it actually makes more sense. The drivers are wearing FedEx uniforms, and often driving FedEx provided vehicles -- and even there, the rulings in FedEx cases across the country have been mixed (and the cases are still going).

There certainly are companies that try to game the system to name people as contractors rather than employees, but in this case, rulings against Lyft and Uber (no matter what you think of those two companies and their business practices) could result in some serious challenges for a number of really useful services that use the internet to enable great services to the public. One hopes, at the very least, that should these rulings go the wrong way, that the federal government and various state governments will, at the very least, update their rules for employee v. contractor classifications to make sure these services can survive.

Filed Under: california, car hailing, employee, independent contractor, labor, ride sharing
Companies: lyft, uber

In The Spirit Of The Holidays: It's Not Too Late For Uber To Avoid Stupid Patent Of The Month

from the fix-things-now dept

"Good Spirit," he pursued, as down upon the ground he fell before it: "Your nature intercedes for me, and pities me. Assure me that I yet may change these shadows you have shown me, by an altered life!" – Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol

As our devoted readers are aware, each month we highlight a Stupid Patent. This month, in the holiday spirit, we've decided to highlight a Stupid Patent Application. Our motivation for doing so is that we hope that our post, like Dickens' Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come, encourages a prospective patentee to change its stupid-patent-application-filing-ways. You see, we recently learned that Uber has filed for a patent on something so basic, so fundamental to our economic system, that it should be called out now before it becomes too late for both Uber and the public.

Here is some background: imagine you own a transportation company. You have a limited number of seats and you know that customers are willing to pay different amounts based on their sensitivity to cost. But you don't want seats to go empty, since every empty seat is a missed profit opportunity. So you implement a system where the more demand is up or supply is down, the more you charge. Or conversely, the more demand is down and supply is up, the less you charge. And then you file a patent application for your "invention." 

Because Uber did just that, Uber is being forewarned of its risk of receiving the Stupid Patent of the Month award. Specifically, Uber has applied for a patent on a form of dynamic pricing, a practice that (even if it didn't exist before the study of economics) has been heavily in use by various industries, including most famously by airlines, for over 20 years.  

Here is claim 1 from U.S. Patent Application 13/828,481:

1. A method for adjusting prices for services, the method being performed by one or more processors and comprising:

making a determination of an amount of requesters for a service at a given time;

making a determination of an amount of available service providers for providing the service at the given time;

adjusting a price, relative to a default price, for using the service provided by one or more service providers based, at least in part, on the determined amount of requesters and the determined amount of available service providers; and

transmitting pricing data corresponding to the adjusted price to one or more requesting devices or one or more provider devices so that the adjusted price can be displayed on at least one of the one or more requesting devices or the one or more provider devices and be indicative of an adjustment in price as compared to the default price.

Essentially, Uber claims to have invented the method of (a) checking how many people are requesting a service; (b) checking how many service providers are currently available; (c) adjusting the price based on these two factors; and (d) then showing the price to the person requesting it. Not only was such dynamic pricing almost surely known before 2012, this is a claim directed to an "abstract idea" of dynamic pricing based on supply and demand. The addition of the "transmitting" clause (i.e. "do it on a computer") shouldn't matter to patentability.

In filing its application, Uber acts as a good example of how our patent system has encouraged the filing of applications that should never be filed in the first place. The story here is not about a patent that has been granted, but rather that Uber thinks a patent can be granted. Applications like Uber's clog up the Patent Office, and oftentimes issue, despite clear flaws. Once issued, they can become fodder for trolls. Or in this case, they could be used to chill investment of time and resources in competitors.

We hope Uber's application never becomes eligible for the regular prize, because this is a stupid patent application that the Patent Office should quickly reject. We hope Uber realizes the harm patents such as this one cause to the innovation economy as a whole. It is not too late for Uber to change its ways and reject a system of Stupid Patents. We encourage Uber to join our fight against stupid patents before it suffers from "No rest, no peace. Incessant torture of remorse."

Republished from the Electronic Frontier Foundation

Filed Under: patents, surge pricing
Companies: uber

Korea Threatens To Put Uber's CEO In Prison For Offering An 'Illegal' Taxi Service

from the you're-not-in-the-us-any-more dept

Uber, the "hail a ride from your phone" company, has faced quite a few challenges lately, many of which it's brought on itself. Questions raised about its practices, its approach to privacy and its way of dealing with the competition are all worth exploring. Frankly, some of the criticism seems well-deserved, while other parts are clearly blown way out of proportion. Many of the problems seem to stem from the fact that Uber is a company that grew insanely fast and hasn't quite realized that people no longer view it as the scrappy startup it was not too long ago.

As we've pointed out for years, one of Uber's best marketing strategies was to enter a market -- have regulators freak out -- and then use the controversy as a marketing opportunity to drum up interest, and create enough public support to get regulators to fix the laws, allowing a useful service to thrive. And, in fact, most of the time, the regulations that Uber runs up against are really silly. They're often much more focused on limiting competition and keeping taxi fees inflated, rather than things like consumer safety.

However, while this tactic worked really well when it was small and scrappy, as a giant company (with a variety of scandals, overblown or not), it seems this strategy is having some trouble these days. Regulators have been pushing back much more strongly -- such as with new lawsuits, and it appears that regulators in other countries are taking the fight to a different level. Over in South Korea, prosecutors have now indicted Uber's CEO Travis Kalanick for "operating an illegal taxi service."

Of course, it's plainly ridiculous to make this a criminal offense. Whatever you think of the company's practices, you'd be hard pressed to find people who don't recognize that it and related services have actually made it much easier and cheaper for people to get around urban areas. The ability to quickly get a car (and to pay for it automatically) via a phone really does change the way people can get around. It also has been shown to decrease things like drunk driving by offering a very easy alternative. While some have said what Uber has done is "nothing new," like many great innovations the truly powerful part is in the little details: Uber made it super convenient. Whether or not it was new, that convenience made it powerful.

It seems that regulators would do well to figure out ways to adjust the laws to make sure that offerings like Uber can operate. Perhaps that requires safety/background checks and the like, but to outright declare the operations illegal -- even with the threat of prison time -- suggests serious problems with the regulations, rather than with Uber.

Filed Under: criminal, illegal taxi service, indictnment, ride sharing, south korea, travis kalanick
Companies: uber