Over regulation kills business; maybe not companies like Uber, but smaller companies that are still trying to get off the ground.
This is a slippery slope.
As a "private organization", Uber of course doesn't have to do anything.
But if it wants to operate a business on NYC's streets on a (massive) scale -- well, that's a privilege, not a right. And if they want access to that privilege, they're gonna have to play by the rules as set forth by the city's voters and their elected representatives. Who have a vested in interest having reliable access to that data for well, a whole bunch of pretty obvious reasons.
It's called "rule of law", a concept which Uber has demonstrated considerable difficult in understanding thus far. Once they do, we can perhaps have a conversation about whether certain regulations are really useful or necessary or not. But it needs to be based on the pragmatic merits (or lack thereof) of those regulations. Arguments on the basis of "they're a private organization; you have not right to tell them what to do" just don't hold a lot of water in these contexts.
This is a slippery slope.
No, it's just life in the big city. And it's about time Uber got used to it.
But as to the principled, absolutist counterargument that was offered: "they're a private organization; you can't tell them what to do! you just can't!" -- well sorry, but that's not how things work.
I get that a business doesn't have the same rights as a person, but do we really want to be crafting a maze of one-off rules for every company just because each of them have something special that we don't want to pay them for?
afaik, Uber makes money selling some of this data to municipalities.
I don't know, and won't pretend to know. Again, it all comes down to the merits. One might very well make the case that companies should be compensated for providing data in some cases.
I was objecting solely to the "business rights" aspect some people were bringing up (and which comes up continuously in discussions about regulation and business ethics generally, here) -- which we seem to be roughly on the same page on.
Forcing an organization to do something is a big deal because, unless you are specific about when and what kind of data you can force a private company to disclose, it can be abused. This is why such arguments are important.
But if it wants to operate a business on NYC's streets on a (massive) scale -- well, that's a privilege, not a right.
It actually is not a privilege, it is a right. Conducting business is a First Amendment right. In fact, this is a dangerous argument: if conducting business is a privilege, couldn't the government decide which businesses it likes and it doesn't like? The use of New York's streets is indeed a privilege, but that is already paid for by road taxes - anything more than that is just double dipping.
It's called "rule of law", a concept which Uber has demonstrated considerable difficult in understanding thus far.
Let's leave the attacks out of this - replace Uber with any other company and you have the same set of issues to discuss. Instead, let's just focus on the merits of the idea of government coercion of a private company to release data.
If this data was truly beneficial to the public, couldn't the government buy it from the company through a voluntary transaction, paid for by taxpayers? The company can decide whether or not they wish to sell that information. The only reason a company would refuse to sell anonymized information is if they think the data is important to their competitive success.
I'm a big fan of the First Amendment, but I'm not following your argument here.
The amendment reads: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances."
Furthermore, the framers of the Constitution wrote the Commerce Clause, specifically giving Congress the ability to regulate how businesses conduct themselves (albeit in a limited way).
Do you have a court case in mind that provides more insight here?
This whole discussion could also call into question the idea of corporate personhood, but that's another can of worms. :)
I don't think anybody is disputing that regulation is allowed and useful, but we should also be questioning all regulation to ensure that the government isn't overreaching.
An important decision, for sure. Doesn't have anything to do with the First Amendment, though.
Or, for that matter, setting up a pop-up restaurant in the middle of Central Park somewhere. Because, you know, the foot traffic and all the opportunity.
After all, "conducting business" is your "absolute right", so why not?
That's a pretty peculiar interpretation of the First Amendment, for sure.
Why should a government be able to coerce a private organization into providing data? How do you define data? At least in the US, I can think of 2 amendments that would be violated by such action (is data speech? can you be forced to self incriminate?).
There are so many things that the government can force an individual or a business to do in the name of public good, but we can agree that many of those things count as government overreach, why not this?
Why should a government be able to coerce a private organization into providing data?
This does not, however, give the government a blank check on an individual or a business's rights. We don't barter our rights for public benefits - we pay for them through taxation.
If Uber wanted to sell or give away data, properly anonymized and in accordance with their terms of service, that seems fine to me. But it's potentially quite valuable to Uber even in this state, and it doesn't really make sense to require a business to give them this data, any more than it would be to require other data-driven companies to do so. If it's not for public safety or something of that nature, I don't see why the government should really care.
Aside from public safety, there's a whole lot of reasons -- from measuring how efficient these services really are (in a rapidly changing transportation landscape) to ensuring truly open and fair competition among potential providers -- for which regulators (and the public generally) might have an interest in this data.
We obviously wouldn't want the public to have access to personally identifiable data like GPS movements captured by phones, as this kind of data is highly sensitive. But having access to aggregated, (properly) anonymized data would be sufficient for many things, e.g. to see where local traffic hot spots are and how people commute to work. Giving out this data does not compromise privacy (if done right) and has a very little risk of harming the company that generated it.
Almost all information/research would serve a "public good" if it was converted from private to public. If the government forced an investment firm to reveal which companies they thought were the most undervalued in a market, many people would benefit from that knowledge. The question is, what right and what incentive structure promotes the generation of that knowledge. Theft is certainly not a structure that generates it long term.
How so? Sharing this information is a condition of operating in an area. If that is unprofitable, Uber won't operate there.
But they're not doing that work for "free". They're doing in exchange for the privilege of being able to run a large-scale business on one of the most highly-trafficked street grids on the planet. Which in turn certainly doesn't exactly come for "free" (and in fact costs many billions of dollars per year to run, involving thousands and thousands of people who certainly don't work for fee either), now does it.
So Uber says they don't want to pay for that privilege? That they'd rather not have to comply with regulations (like every other business operator in any other damn category you can think of) because they're... special?
That's fine, of course -- they just don't have to do business in NYC, then.