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Europe's top court advised to treat Uber like a taxi company
Uber is a service that enables people to get from one place to another, but don't you dare call it a taxi company. That way lies a whole mess of burdensome regulations that the startup has fought tooth-and-nail to avoid. Unfortunately, Travis Kalanick and co. may not be able to get away with the ruse much longer in Europe, as a senior expert has suggested that Uber might just be in the transport business.
Europe wants to keep its citizens personal data out of the US
Over the pond, there's a rule preventing companies from moving a user's personal data outside of Europe unless the receiving country has adequate data protection laws. In practice, this means that a company like Twitter can push stored information on a British user to a server in San Francisco, and vice-versa, and plenty of it happens on a regular basis. Now, however, one of the continent's highest legal minds wants to put a stop to it, or at least make sure that it's better regulated. Yves Bot is an Advocate General to the European Court of Justice, and has written a paper saying that America's cavalier attitude to data is dangerous, and should be stopped.
Europe rules e-books won't get tax breaks like paper books
Isn't it ironic that tiny nuances of tax law can often cause colossal results out in the real world? It's one of those judgments that has rocked Europe after its highest court ruled that e-books aren't actually goods at all. Currently, paper books sold in the EU are subjected to a smaller amount of sales tax, since having an educated, literate population is generally considered to be a good thing. France and Luxembourg, seeing no difference between books and e-books, have been offering similar discounts on the latter since 2012.
European Court: It's free trade for a reason, dummy
Primer: The EU is many nations with a single market, if wine is cheaper in France, a German can simply purchase it there. It's why Apple was censured back in 2007 for territorial iTunes stores that stopped people from shopping around. Anything sold in Europe on a per-country basis hangs within a grey area of free trade. That includes what many call "The Greatest Show on Earth" -- The FA Premier League. Sky, the Premier League's media partner in Europe charges £480 ($740) a month for pub and bar owners to screen their matches in their establishments. That's what prompted cash-strapped publican Karen Murphy to buy a decoder box and card from Greece's Nova company for only £118 ($180) a month. Following a legal challenge that has lasted nearly 7 years, the European Court of Justice has ruled that whilst it's legal (or at least, not illegal) to own a foreign decoder in your own home, it is illegal for pubs and other public spaces to use them on copyright grounds. This means that many home users could snap up cheaper European services and erode the value of Sky's £1bn ($1.5bn) Premier League deal, which would make the greatest show on earth just a little less great.
