I would like to point out this is in Canada. Are you trying to call Great Britain a bastion of liberty now?

From TFA:

The Plaintiff alleges that Uber X and Uber XL has created an enormous marketplace for illegal transportation in Toronto,

Here's a question for you, Mr. Lawyer: After you've gone through indictment, court proceedings, habeas corpus, public review, jury trial, appeals, evidence requirements, all the the other normal procedural due process, can you still be left with a verdict that is unfair and unjust, because the law itself is fundamentally unfair?

At least in the USA, the answer is yes, and that's known as violating substantive due process. It can also be an unconstitutional violation of the equal protection of the laws. Canada seems to call it fundamental justice.

tl;dr if it's even illegal at all, it's "illegal" the same way that not giving up your in front-of-bus seat, or marrying someone of a different race, is "illegal".

I'm not sure this is really equivalent: The purpose of self-defense is supposedly to minimize the use of force by both you and the aggressor. You're not causing more violence, you're trying to put an end to it. (You might also shun violence in all forms, as taught by turn the other cheek.)

I make the comparison like this: In a world without violence, self-defense would not be necessary. If we generalize to the set of universes where violence is an option, then self-defense becomes a way of minimizing the damage.

Likewise, if we generalize to a body of law with copyright law, a license to minimize the damaging effects would look something like "You are allowed to distribute this work only if derivative works are also licensed under this license, and you agree not to reserve any other rights, neither is there is no warranty for this software." Yet the GPL goes way far and away above this; the BSD or MIT license seems closer, though fails to contain the viral clause.

What regulations? My locale has virtually no laws applying to Uber, and I'm a happy customer. If what you say is true, how is this possible?

Uber has a set of uniform policies regardless of where you request a ride from. I've requested rides from numerous, very different regulatory schemes, and the experience is fairly uniform. (Or as uniform as you can get given the monopoly status of taxis in many regions.)

Even for people who've had bad experiences, Uber's response is fairly uniform.

There's nothing to be gained by reclassifying them, legally, as something else.

There's nothing about this that's even a little bit true. You're presumably referring to the Constitution, which says:

Representative[s] ... shall be determined by adding to the whole number of free persons, including those bound to service for a term of years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons.

So not only does the Constitution never mention race, but it's actually imposing a penalty on states that want to count slaves: No, you can't get full representation in Congress for slaves.

The northern states wanted to go further, they wanted the representation to be zero.

Also note this section has been replaced per the 14th Amendment.

Ok, I understand nobody on /. will RTFA, but to not even read the first sentence of the summary?

... it's the identity protection company whose CEO published his social security number and dared people to steal his identity. Predictably, 13 different people succeeded.

Also, you don't "accept" a copyright license. You distribute a copyrighted work; and either you're doing it under a license, or you're not. (Of course, sometimes it's the acceptance of a contracts that grants a license, e.g. possessing a CD or buying a license, but this isn't necessarily true, as seen in most F/OSS software. And sometimes we talk about "accepting the terms" to mean complying with the terms. But it's not the license that is accepted as such.)

If your act of distribution is neither licensed, nor fair use, then it becomes illegal.

All you're proposing is suing under fewer conditions. There's still the threat of a lawsuit if I use copyrighted (including copyleft) code in the "wrong way".

Conversely, if you're not going to ever sue someone for using your pastebin code on GitHub, or your project, you're essentially developing public domain, but not letting anyone enjoy the benefits of public domain code by putting it in writing. That's lose-lose for everyone.

Hey, mods: "-1 Overrated" isn't your personal "-1 Disagree" button. That's what comments are for.

You're being needlessly pedantic.

"We reserve the authority to restrict distribution and sue you if you don't follow our requirements" How do you do that? With a license.

How do you enforce said license? With copyright law.

When you say you're "pro-copyleft" you're implicitly saying you're pro-copyright, because you're necessarily using copyright law to say "we reserve the authority to restrict distribution and sue you if you don't follow our requirements (i.e. distribute the source)"

Well... two wrongs don't make a right. When you talk about getting sued by supposedly "free" software projects... it doesn't make you look too good.

So what?

To me, it's a great alternative to taxis, they certainly don't operate like a typical taxi company, except to the extent you can get a lift for cheap in short order. Maybe to the layperson they don't see a difference between hiring a taxi and Uber/Lyft, or whatever. I don't care. The point is, this is answering the wrong question.

Regardless of whether they're a taxi company or not, the sole purpose of the question is political ends: to classify them under regulatory schemes that are almost certainly bad for the industry and bad for customers (good, however, for the small number of taxi and medallion owners who unfairly profit from this scheme).

Only because the law was expanded in 2005: https://www.eff.org/issues/cal...

The law still makes a distinction between ISPs (information services) and telecom: https://www.law.cornell.edu/us...

That's a creative argument, but the problem is, the law doesn't make that distinction.

In both cases, you're peering with another person and exchanging packets with them.

Wikipedia exchanging packets with an ISP isn't any different than me exchanging packets with my ISP.

Indeed, such an assertion would fly in the face of Net Neutrality that says all packets are equal. Wikipedia exchanging packets with me, isn't any different than Wikipedia exchanging packets with Cogent, isn't any different than Cogent exchanging packets with me.

The EFF and other privacy groups immediately requested that the FCC stay its order. The FCC declined to do so.

Wait a second, the EFF was just telling me the Internet is a Telecommunications Service, not an Information Service, in order to get the Title II regulations they were cheerleading for.

When the FCC contorts CALEA, something only supposed to apply to telecommunications, against cryptography on the Internet, it's the end of days, the Internet is dead, ...

When the FCC contorts Title II, something only supposed to apply to telecommunications, against your local ISP, praise the state! It's a miracle! It's justice!

Please. Repeat after me: The FCC is not your friend. The EFF, or the FCC for that matter, can't even identify a single, concrete action by an ISP that Title II would have stopped. It's a pure power grab.

Either the Internet is an Information Service (meaning Title II and CALEA don't apply), or it isn't (so it's a telecommunication service, and CALEA does apply), but you can't have it both ways.

AC. No. Just. No. That's a perverse incentive to do even nastier things.

When you elevate a crime to the level of murder, criminals tend to become murderers.

Because, I mean, if you're going to be executed anyways, why bother keeping witnesses around?