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The ruling (PDF), issued by the Court of Justice of the European Union this morning, will increase pressure on the not-a-taxi biz, and follows a decision that saw its services classed as transport, not digital.
The case relates to charges French authorities want to bring against UberPop - a ride-sharing service that links non-professional, unlicensed drivers with people in need of a lift - and whether it is an information society service. Uber France is trying to slip out of the regulatory net by arguing it is an information society service, which would mean it fell under rules set out in an EU directive on technical standards and regulations. This directive (PDF) stated that member states have to tell the European Commission about any draft rules or legislation that set out technical regulations of information services or products - the idea being to allow Brussels to ensure national laws comply with digital single market rules.
The French authorities didn’t do this for the criminal legislation they are trying to use to charge Uber, and so, as the ECJ noted in its judgement “Uber France infers from this that it cannot therefore be prosecuted on the charges”.
However, the ECJ was not persuaded. It reminded Uber it had last year ruled that the UberPop service offered in Spain was a transport service - not a digital one. The two countries’ services, in the court's view, are “essentially identical”.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by c0lo on Thursday April 12 2018, @01:48AM (2 children)
There is a way to structure a hailing app as a purely digital and not a transport: make the app charge the customer a fixed fee for any hailing event.
As such, you are only transiting information, have no contract with the drivers and the fees you get are not related with the actual transport service - your rendered service ends well before the actual transportation service is provided.
Of course, you won't get to a fucking multinational by charging pennies for every provided service event.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by drussell on Thursday April 12 2018, @01:53AM (1 child)
Services like #TAXI (and their app) have been around for a lot longer than Uber of Lyft and they charge more than pennies to essentially call a cab for you. Seems to me it was about $2 when it was introduced then went to $5 or something.
I guess it is mostly for drunk people who cannot remember how to properly dial a phone? :)
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Thursday April 12 2018, @02:21AM
Well, to be fair, you don't exactly "dial" a phone any more. It's been years since I've actually seen a dial phone. I suppose a dial phone would still work on a POTS line, but it's also possible that all switchboards have been "upgraded" to only work with tones.
As for making a phone call - there are some phones that I can't figure out sober!