"It was intended that when Newspeak had been adopted once and for all and Oldspeak forgotten, a heretical thought .... should be literally unthinkable, at least so far as thought is dependent on words. " -- "1984", George Orwell

It applies equally to anyone who drives people around for profit... not just taxi drivers. Limo drivers and bus drivers are in that category as well.

While this might seem to suck, I know from first-hand inquiries that it is not possible to allow a charitable organization such as a church, for example, that has a kitchen to allow their kitchen to be used even by one of its own members for any kind of commercial purpose, even if the church receives absolutely *NO* benefit from said use. Allowing it would jeopardize the church's tax-exempt status, so it's not allowed.

Really, if you want to be a charity, then you can't allow your resources to be used by people with commercial interests. Sucks for open source organizations that want to act as charities, and I can see it being detrimental for some donations because I know that getting a tax exemption does motivate some people to donate.

But bear in mind that if tax-exemption were really the only reason or even the primary reason why people might donate to a cause or organization that they may believe in, it's highly unlikely that something like crowdfunding would ever work, and we have plenty of evidence to show that it does.

Why should they need a special license? What kind of special skill is required when driving with a passenger, that is not required when driving solo?

The context of your question, and in particular, what you state immediately afterwards about the reason suggests to me that if you were to ask the DMV that exact question (who could give you a much more enlightening answer than I could... my own speculation is that it probably has something to do with insurance), you would probably suspect the DMV to be lying to you in whatever actual answer they gave anyways, or even at best just default to the assumption that the answer is just a cover for the notion that the different classifications of drivers licenses are actually just a money grab on the DMV's part.

Of course, they make the rules. So even if it is a money grab, the law is still on their side. If that is the case, then perhaps instead of focusing on the Uber issue, one should be investigating the underlying factors that influence it... since as long as they are in place, there's going to be a conflict.

Pizza delivery boys don't drive passengers for profit

... if a person *is* driving other people to places for purposes of commercial gain, then they should probably have to get a special kind of license to do so... just like a cab driver.

And of course, there's the issue that even if you weren't making a profit, as long as you are giving rides to complete strangers, then technically, you are really just picking up hitchhikers.

So yeah.... I can kind of see the problem that they might have with something like Uber.

The difference is Dish pays broadcast rights. Aereo doesn't.

Most people who might be willing to take something that belonged to somebody else, especially if they felt the person wouldn't find out about it (or wouldn't notice until they had at least gotten away with taking it) are not likely to commit any kind of violent crime, even if not because there are limits on what kinds of immoral practices they might engage in, it could fall to the simple notion they would probably feel less likely to be able to successfully get away with such an act than one that is performed without anyone seeing them.

Most thefts are crimes of opportunity, and not associated with any kind of threat of violence.

Will the car refuse to start if the camera is obscured and the driver can't be identified?

Probably... but only if the owner cannot be reached by phone/text message.

Although I realize it's not difficult to imagine scenarios where this would actually cause problems... perhaps the developers of this tech are anticipating that the number of actual complaints which arise as a result of actual experienced difficulty will be small enough that they can still afford to lose those customers' business.

Only if your car has no way to reach you by phone. It will still ask you for confirmation.

Keys can be stolen... sometimes without the person even being aware of it until the car has been taken.

If the police want to search your phone after you have clearly told them that you do not consent to any such search, then you can sue the cop. Politely inform the cop that you are aware that such a search without a warrant would be a violation of your constitutional rights, and that if the search is carried out in spite of this, then you will hold the officer accountable for that violation. This may or may not be considered by a dickhead police officer as a a threat, but if it is, again politely remind the officer that while you're not going to try to stop him from doing his job, you are informing him that you do not consent to such a search without a warrant, and that you will not allow your rights to be violated without also taking the matter before the courts.

Even a complete asshole police officer will probably just let you go at that point... as you've made it clear that you're not going to actively try to do anything to actually stop him from doing anything that he might think he needs to do right then and there, so he won't have a convenient excuse to throw handcuffs on you, and you've only reminded him of the potential lawful consequences for doing things that he's not supposed to. He'd have to genuinely believe that he was lawfully in the right to still carry out said search... but of course, as I said, you could sue the cop afterwards.

What do you do if refusal to cooperate with law enforcement is construed as obstruction of justice?

The question is, however, if you do not actually *do* anything to stop them from searching your phone, can your lack of doing anything be construed as implied consent? I mean, I might even say out loud, multiple times, that I don't want you to search my phone, but if I don't actually *DO* anything to stop you from searching, doesn't that mean that you could infer my actual intent from my actions, or lack thereof, and ignore what I'm saying as easily as if I were saying something that was complete nonsense?

Being true doesn't make something not defamation, it just makes it *exponentially* harder to win a suit on the grounds of alleged defamation. Basically, when the information is factual, the person being published about would have to show that either it was somehow more likely that the publisher was providing that information solely from sense of malice (eg, the information is relatively confidential and does not serve any kind of public interest, such as publishing that a person had cheated on their spouse), or else the factual information is provided in a way that a reasonable person might come to an unfactual wrong conclusion about the matter, usually because although the provided information is true, relevant facts are unstated which could significantly alter the kind of conclusion a reasonable person would come to. For example, suppose that a person has a legitimate medical reason to have a prescription for morphine, and they are required to be consuming fairly high dosages of it regularly, and then someone goes and publishes that this person appears to have a morphine addiction (which can be reasonably argued to be true, since they are only publishing that is how things *appear*) because of how often they (factually) use it, then even though the information can be considered factual, that person might reasonably be sued for defamation, but even then, since the person being published about was actually taking high dosages of morphine, the publisher of such information could probably claim genuine belief on their part as a defense and the defamation suit would likely fail. The onus would be on the person suing to show that the publisher had somehow deliberately framed the facts that they published in such a manner as to create an impression that is *not* factually true. This is not necessarily always impossible to do, but it would also probably not be a remotely easy thing for the person being published about to accomplish, no matter how much money they spent on lawyers.