I'm so tired of this talking point. Either follow our laws or get the fuck out of our market.
There's no special right for American companies to ignore our rules and when they get fined for breaking them, that's just rule of law.
Maybe there's been enough regulatory capture that big corps can ignore laws on the other side of the pond, but for now, we are still a society of law and justice.
And it’s also incredibly tiring to force legal paradigms of one country over another. Don’t like it? Don’t operate. Please don’t operate and whine how the country is not bending over backwards to your demands.
The internet has enabled a sort of structural/emergent legal colonialism - not centrally planned or directed, but as an emergent property of a global information system and those most economically incentivized to profit off it. The most immediately unpleasant example of this is nuisance streamers who deliberately antagonize people in foreign jurisdictions while leaning on the norms and protections of their own home turf.
Reading the Guardian article - it feels that the decision is weakly motivated. It is not clear exactly what rules Uber broke.
“Uber has committed serious infringements” by deactivating driver accounts without warning or human involvement, the organization’s deputy chair Monique Verdier said in a statement.
“From one moment to the next they no longer had any income … A computer should not make decisions on its own that have (such) major consequences.”
If you manage to extract usable info from that quote kudos. To me it looks like regulator going berserk in reading the unholy mess that is GDPR.
GDPR rules ban decisions made solely by computer algorithms when they have a significant impact on people’s lives, such as on employment. Such decisions require meaningful human review and a way to challenge a decision.
But the drivers are not Uber employees. Which is the whole point of uber existing. It is a shitty model from Uber's side - but in this case just attack the model. Outlaw gig economy and be done with it. There are enough protections in employment laws in EU.
Given this kind of ambiguity, it seems like we need some kind of, like, procedure by which it’s decided whether Uber violated the law as written, and if so, what the consequences should be - maybe the sort of thing where we’d get experts in the law together in a room to investigate and debate the merits of each side’s argument and determine which stands up to scrutiny or not. Maybe we could have third disinterested legal expert hear both sides and make a decision. That’s really the only way to clear this whole thing up, I think.
This is not true in all jurisdictions. Some places have been smart enough to see through this transparent legal fiction and declare Uber drivers to be employees, with Uber having all the relevant responsibilities toward them.
This is classic US common law loophole lawyering. That's just not how EU law works. I discussed this in depth with another commenter in this thread a while ago if you want to know more: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48707697
Comments
*Netherlands raises $1bn in special taxes from overseas operation.
No, it’s a fine because they broke the law. The EU fortunately takes that seriously.
Uber is breaking Dutch law.
I'm so tired of this talking point. Either follow our laws or get the fuck out of our market.
There's no special right for American companies to ignore our rules and when they get fined for breaking them, that's just rule of law.
Maybe there's been enough regulatory capture that big corps can ignore laws on the other side of the pond, but for now, we are still a society of law and justice.
And it’s also incredibly tiring to force legal paradigms of one country over another. Don’t like it? Don’t operate. Please don’t operate and whine how the country is not bending over backwards to your demands.
The internet has enabled a sort of structural/emergent legal colonialism - not centrally planned or directed, but as an emergent property of a global information system and those most economically incentivized to profit off it. The most immediately unpleasant example of this is nuisance streamers who deliberately antagonize people in foreign jurisdictions while leaning on the norms and protections of their own home turf.
Reading the Guardian article - it feels that the decision is weakly motivated. It is not clear exactly what rules Uber broke.
If you manage to extract usable info from that quote kudos. To me it looks like regulator going berserk in reading the unholy mess that is GDPR.
That is the whole point of the GDPR. The spirit counts, not some checkmark rule. That's how the teleological interpretation works.
GDPR rules ban decisions made solely by computer algorithms when they have a significant impact on people’s lives, such as on employment. Such decisions require meaningful human review and a way to challenge a decision.
But the drivers are not Uber employees. Which is the whole point of uber existing. It is a shitty model from Uber's side - but in this case just attack the model. Outlaw gig economy and be done with it. There are enough protections in employment laws in EU.
“Such as” employment.
Given this kind of ambiguity, it seems like we need some kind of, like, procedure by which it’s decided whether Uber violated the law as written, and if so, what the consequences should be - maybe the sort of thing where we’d get experts in the law together in a room to investigate and debate the merits of each side’s argument and determine which stands up to scrutiny or not. Maybe we could have third disinterested legal expert hear both sides and make a decision. That’s really the only way to clear this whole thing up, I think.
This is not true in all jurisdictions. Some places have been smart enough to see through this transparent legal fiction and declare Uber drivers to be employees, with Uber having all the relevant responsibilities toward them.
People's lives, not just employees.
This is classic US common law loophole lawyering. That's just not how EU law works. I discussed this in depth with another commenter in this thread a while ago if you want to know more: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48707697
GDPR is not limited to employment matters.