Rideshare website ruled illegal

http://www.thestar.com/business/article/535185

by nickb • 18 years ago

36 62 18 years ago

tptacek17• 18 years ago

This kind of makes sense: if ever there was an industry that needed regulation, it's taxi/car service. PickupPal is basically the Napster of taxi dispatchers. I'm not saying I think it should be outlawed; I'm just saying, it's not crazy that others do think that.

mseebach5• 18 years ago

Really? Why? What makes driving a stranger around in your car so much more dangerous than driving your wife and kids around?

It's absolutely crazy. The bus company asking the government to protect it from delivering the service that their customers want and need.

tptacek17• 18 years ago

Hmmm. Start here: the "threat" is that people will set up businesses offering rides to people full-time. Those people are, in fact, nothing less than unlicensed cab companies. Now, let's go with:

* There's an official definition for what a "fare" is, and cab drivers can't change it in the middle of a trip.

* Cab drivers lose their medallions if they drive people around in circles to rack up fares.

* Cab drivers lose their medallions if they randomly drop people off halfway to their destination.

* The insurance requirements for cab drivers are much more strict than for noncommercial drivers.

* Cab drivers are more stringently licensed than normal drivers; in fact, with "P2P car service", there's no incentive to be licensed at all. Reckless driving is a huge problem with urban cab drivers.

* Taxis themselves are inspected for safety, and cab companies risk their licensing by fielding cabs with bald tires and fucked up brakes.

There are two obvious reasons why you'd want to be careful about using the Internet to route around taxi regulation:

* There is no incentive whatsoever for "P2P car services" to follow safety, insurance, and fair business practice rules, because a bad actor can simply re-register their car with a new account.

* The P2P system cannibalizes the regulated taxi system, which offer far more consumer protections.

That's a start. I don't think it's crazy at all --- though again, I'm not arguing that this Internet service should be outlawed.

jrockway• 18 years ago

The solution is to move this website somewhere else. Last time I checked, Sealand didn't have car-sharing regulations.

Anyway, if people want to do something, you can't stop them from wanting to do it by adding a disclaimer to a website. Sorry, that's not how the world works anymore.

callmeed• 18 years ago

I wouldn't be surprised if sites like airbedandbreakfast.com get targeted as well.

vaksel• 18 years ago

probably one murder away from being shut down

gills2• 18 years ago

Nothing to see here, just a complaint from a bus charter company trying to protect their turf. It's obviously not fair for us peons to vanpool in private vehicles because some looter isn't getting his cut.

elai• 18 years ago

Whenever I think of taxi medallions and taxi licensing, I think of a corrupt protectionist cash raking scheme that make taxis way overpriced.

pageman• 18 years ago

time to put the site as a "hidden service" http://www.torproject.org/docs/tor-hidden-service.html.en

Rideshare website ruled illegal

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