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_ART1100RE...
http://search.municode.com/html/14143/level2/DIVII_ART1100RE...
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).
here's the relevant passage: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/22117/tcp_and_taxicab_distinguished....
(source: 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)
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.
"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.
Or is something preventing them form doing that, because licensing is inherently a way to protect old cartels from new cheaper/better upstarts?
http://www.medallionholders.com/medallions.html (n.b. this is cartel-funded propaganda)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
But ... the limit is sane. And a retired doctor can come back to work if they see a big shortage (which gives the system time to train more grads).
Was that intended to be a double-entendre?