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发帖数: 3549 | 1 投资人的钱都在打官司
Uber faces attacks on multiple fronts
By Marisa Kendall, [email protected]/* */
Posted: 07/05/2016 05:14:23 AM PDT | Updated: about 14 hours ago
SAN FRANCISCO -- The past few months have been good to Uber -- the world's
most valuable startup raised a record-breaking $3.5 billion in June and in
April escaped a high-profile trial that threatened to upend its entire
business model.
But as Uber celebrates those milestones, it faces an army of attackers. The
ride-booking giant is spending millions fighting dozens of lawsuits over
everything from the way it vets its drivers to how it advertises. Industry
experts say Uber's deep pockets -- the company is worth more than $60
billion and has $11 billion in cash -- and its disruptive habit of flouting
traditional industry rules as it expands around the globe make it an
attractive legal target.
This file photo taken on March 10, 2016 shows a man checking a vehicle at
the first of Uber’s ’Work On Demand’ recruitment events in
This file photo taken on March 10, 2016 shows a man checking a vehicle at
the first of Uber's 'Work On Demand' recruitment events in South Los Angeles
. (Mark Ralston/AFP/Getty Images)
Uber's ultracompetitive company culture doesn't help, said New York
University professor Arun Sundararajan, author of "The Sharing Economy."
"It's the personality of the early team," he said, "which is very much 'we'
re going to dominate the world, and we're going to ask for forgiveness
rather than asking for permission.' "
And as the company puts out one fire after another in court, it's also
battling unfriendly regulations in places like Austin and struggling with
criminal charges overseas.
Uber declined to comment on its legal and regulatory battles.
The company is fighting more than 70 federal lawsuits in courts across the
country and has resolved at least another 60, according to a search of a
national database of federal court cases. And that doesn't include actions
in state courts. Uber was sued 46 times in federal court this year alone.
Airbnb, the next most valuable U.S. startup, racked up six lawsuits during
that time. Lyft, Uber's chief competitor, faced seven and Facebook had 27.
Uber has been hit disproportionately hard in court, but that's hardly
surprising, Sundararajan said. Part of the problem is Uber's lukewarm
relationship with its drivers -- which the company is trying to change with
perks like its recently launched quasi union in New York City.
But the courtroom showdowns could become an issue for 6-year-old Uber as it
continues fundraising, said Paul Boyd, managing partner at ClearPath Capital
Partners. Even Uber, with its breakneck growth and massive war chest, isn't
immune to the power a lawsuit has to taint a company's image.
"It will make investors question," Boyd said.
So far, the company hasn't faced any devastating legal losses. Uber dodged
what could have been a major blow in April when it reached a settlement
worth up to $100 million to resolve claims that its drivers were entitled to
employee benefits such as overtime pay and reimbursement for expenses. The
deal, which is awaiting approval from a San Francisco federal judge, allows
the company to avoid a high-profile trial and the expense of reclassifying
its drivers as employees -- a major win.
The ride-booking platform announced public settlements in at least six cases
during the past year, agreeing to shell out up to $163 million. Those deals
seem to represent a shift for the company, which originally made a show of
fighting litigation tooth and nail, said Joshua Davis, associate dean for
academic affairs at the University of San Francisco School of Law.
"One possibility is that you're seeing a kind of maturing of the company in
a way," he said. "That it is going from sort of a cowboy mentality, if you
will, to more of the attitude of an established company."
France in June fined Uber and two executives up to $1.1 million for criminal
convictions of violating transportation and privacy laws. The charges
targeted the low-cost UberPop service, which the company has had to suspend
there and in several other countries throughout Europe. At home, the
California Public Utilities Commission fined Uber $7.6 million in January
for withholding information about its trips. And Uber has spent another $2.3
million since 2013 lobbying Congress and the state Legislature, according
to OpenSecrets.org and the Secretary of State website.
That's nothing compared to the more than $8 million Uber and competitor Lyft
reportedly spent fighting an Austin rule requiring drivers to undergo
fingerprint background checks, only to lose a vote in May and pull their
services from the city.
Uber also pays a massive in-house legal team. A LinkedIn search turned up
nearly 50 members around the world, and the company's website lists 24
openings in its legal department.
Some lawsuits are backed by Uber's enemies in the taxi industry, who cry
foul because Uber doesn't adhere to their regulations. Others target Uber's
driver background checks -- some argue they are too lax; others claim they
dig too deeply. The company also has been accused of failing to protect
female passengers from being sexually assaulted by drivers, leaving driver
information vulnerable to a data breach, and refusing to accommodate blind
passengers' service dogs.
Despite the pending settlement for up to $100 million, the debate over
whether Uber drivers should be employees or independent contractors is far
from over. Lawyers have filed a string of follow-on suits, and the issue
constantly crops up in seemingly unrelated cases.
It's a key factor in many of the dozen lawsuits filed by San Francisco-based
lawyer Christopher Dolan -- he argues Uber should be held accountable for
the misdeeds of its drivers, while Uber counters it's not to blame because
the drivers are independent contractors. In one such case, an Uber driver
struck and killed a 6-year-old girl in San Francisco on New Year's Eve, 2013
. The fights seem personal for Dolan, whose law office happens to be across
the street from Uber's Market Street headquarters.
"I don't like bullies," he said. "And Uber was a bully."
Some of this litigation has the potential to do serious damage. An antitrust
suit in New York, which accuses Uber of illegally fixing the prices its
drivers charge instead of allowing them to compete with each other, could be
worth more than $1 billion and seeks to upend Uber's pricing model, Davis
said.
Depending on how the court receives the case, "Uber could be anywhere
between just fine and in a whole lot of trouble," he said.
But Uber may have a secret weapon. In June a panel of federal appellate
judges in the Ninth Circuit indicated it was leaning toward upholding the
arbitration clause Uber has drivers sign. That could force many pending
lawsuits against Uber out of court and into private arbitration, and make it
difficult for drivers to bring future class actions.
Even if the lawsuits keep coming, Lux Capital partner Bilal Zuberi, who
doesn't invest in Uber or its competitors, said they are unlikely to shake
Uber's solid foundation.
"Lawsuits do not indicate anything fundamentally necessarily wrong with the
company," he said. "They just indicate that some people are unhappy with the
company's existence or with the work that the company is doing."
Uber goes to court
Uber is fighting more than 70 lawsuits in federal courts across the country,
plus additional litigation in state courts. Here's a rundown of some of the
key cases:
Sexual assaults -- Two women who allege they were sexually assaulted by
their Uber drivers say the company's driver background check policies fail
to protect riders. Uber tried unsuccessfully to get the case thrown out by
arguing it's not liable for the attacks because its drivers are independent
contractors, not employees.
Antitrust -- An antitrust suit filed in New York federal court claims Uber
illegally fixes the prices its drivers charge, instead of letting them
compete against each other as independent contractors typically do.
Taxi drivers take a stand -- Southern California-based cab company A Taxi
accuses Uber of engaging in unfair business practices by flouting
traditional taxi regulations.
Data breach -- Uber drivers who had their personal information stolen in a
2014 data breach say the company didn't do enough to protect them.
Stolen intellectual property -- Entrepreneur Kevin Halpern claims he's the
one who came up with the idea for a mobile-phone based car service, and Uber
CEO Travis Kalanick stole it.
Uber driver stabbed -- San Francisco Uber driver Abdo Ghazi, who says the
company refused to reimburse him for medical expenses after he was stabbed
and punched in the face by a passenger, demands that Uber reclassify its
drivers as employees. | p**f
发帖数: 3549 | 2 Airbnb is suing its hometown to allow users to break the law
Published: July 5, 2016 2:14 p.m. ET
Protesters fight the use of short-term home rentals in San Francisco, Airbnb
’s hometown where housing is at a premium.
San Francisco, ground zero in the tech startup boom, has also become one of
the costliest housing markets in the U.S., thanks to a housing shortage that
frustrates residents and motivates landlords and property owners to evict
tenants and replace them with tech workers at sky high rents.
In this heated environment, privately held Airbnb Inc., the best known of
the home-renting services, is both a symbol and one of many factors helping
fuel the displacement of longtime residents in San Francisco and beyond. It
is probably safe to say that Airbnb has a love-hate relationship with the
city where the company was founded by two of it co-founders who rented out
air mattresses in the living room with breakfast to help pay their rent.
Now, Airbnb is suing the city in federal court over a local law about to go
into effect, an ordinance voted on unanimously by a Board of Supervisors
that is less friendly to tech than the city’s mayor. The suit, which
invokes, among other things, a 20-year federal act protecting freedom of
expression on the internet, looks like it could be a major legal test of
this mostly unregulated territory of home renting and of big import to the
company now valued at $30 billion on paper.
“I am sure it will be closely monitored,” said Kevin Guy, director of San
Francisco’s Office of Short Term Rentals, which was set up last year to
enforce the registration of home rentals. “How it will affect the
regulations of other jurisdictions is still too early to tell.”
The suit is going to test whether or not services like Airbnb, Expedia’s
EXPE, -1.65% HomeAway and others can use laws that were created to protect
freedom of expression, service provider liability and data privacy, to avoid
policing its own users, some of whom may be violating local laws. It may
also pits advocates for internet rights against housing advocates.
In its new law, San Francisco asks that “hosting platforms” verify that
all San Francisco rental listings have been registered with the city’s
short term rentals office. The ordinance also requires that Airbnb and
others take down from their websites any unverified, nonregistered listings
or listings that violate the city’s short term rental laws, and establishes
fines of up to $1,000 a day for every unverified listing. The new law is
set to go into effect July 24 and is in addition to the pro-Airbnb law San
Francisco passed in early 2015, which legalized short term rentals.
In Airbnb’s suit to block the newest ordinance, it cites the important
Communications Decency Act, a 20-year old act that protects freedom of
expression on the internet, as well as the First Amendment and the Storage
Communications Act, which protects the data privacy of customers of
electronic communication service providers.
Airbnb’s attorneys said in the complaint against the city that the
ordinance is completely blocked by the CDA, which pre-empts state and local
laws that treat a website “as the publisher or speaker of any information
provided by another information content provider.”
Some legal experts in the complex area of internet law agreed that Airbnb
and other platforms are viewed as intermediaries, not the creators of the
content, and they have protections under this law. David Greene, a senior
staff attorney and civil liberties director at the Electronic Frontier
Foundation, which calls the CDA the most important law created to protect
internet speech, said Airbnb has a good argument here.
“The San Francisco law is going to require that if anyone has a post on
Airbnb, they include their license number, to the extent that Airbnb is
being held liable because of some defect in the content,” he said.
But the city says that there is nothing in San Francisco’s pending
ordinance that is punishing the platforms for their users’ content.
“In fact, it’s not regulating user content at all—it’s regulating the
business activity of the hosting platform itself,” a spokeswoman for the
San Francisco’s City Attorney’s office said in a statement.
She added that it is the same principle for online vendors of alcohol and
cigarettes.
“All businesses that sell those products have a legal duty to verify the
age of their customers, whether it’s online or at the corner store, so they
don’t sell alcohol and cigarettes to children.…The Communications Decency
Act doesn’t render all business laws moot simply because a business
happens to operate on the internet.”
Still, San Francisco is having a difficult time cracking down on its
citizens who are violating the law, i.e., they are renting out their
property for more than the 90-day limit when the owner is not also present
in the unit, or they are renting out multiple properties. In a report in
April, the city’s budget office declared that “most short-term rental
hosts are out of compliance.”
“Even if we had perfect compliance, there are very likely not 6,000
registrable hosts out there,” said Guy, the head of the office of short
term housing. “There are those who have not come in to register who rent
year round, they don’t live at the property, or they have multiple
properties.”
He added that there are also a number of listings without reviews that
appear inactive and should be removed. The city has asked the companies to
collaborate to help make the registration process easier for hosts and
talked with Airbnb, which publicized its outreach events, “but we did not
come to terms,” he said.
How this case plays out is likely going to be key to the future of the
company, as it continues to fight laws in cities around the world, and its
future valuation. The arguments Airbnb is using feel disingenuous, however:
It lets the company hide noncompliant users, who are essentially breaking a
city law, under the guise of the Communications Decency Act and other laws
meant to protect platforms.
Airbnb is more than a platform, it is a service to find lodging in a
normally regulated industry, and its stance that neither the company nor the
cities should police these users feels absurd. If it wins, though, it will
have a much tougher negotiation stance with other cities, even while dealing
with hurt feelings in its hometown. |
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