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Uber faces $5 million suit from San Francisco's oldest cab company
Another party is suing Uber over the ride-hailing service's business practices. This time it's San Francisco's Flywheel, the taxi company formerly known as DeSoto Cab, also known as SF's oldest taxi company. To the tune of a $5 million-plus federal suit, Flywheel alleges that since UberX came to be in 2012, the city's taxi industry has lost 65 percent of its riders and 30 percent of its drivers, according to SF Gate.
PROTECT IP Act called unconstitutional by bipartisan group of law professors
Turns out Eric Schmidt is not alone in his vehement opposition to the PROTECT IP Act, and the resistance is hardly partisan. A group of over 100 law professors signed a letter (jointly authored by Mark Lemley, David Levine, and David Post) arguing that the legislation working its way through congress is unconstitutional. The Supreme Court has previously ruled that speech can't be suppressed without the speaker being given an opportunity to defend his or her actions. Yet, under the bill being advocated for by the RIAA the MPAA, a judge can issue a temporary restraining order that will essentially shutdown a site based only on evidence presented by the government. The letter warns that, not only could overseas domain owners be cheated of the right to due process but, plenty of protected speech could be censored based a single piece of infringing material. As we warned, this can only get nastier and this nascent battle is still only just getting started. Check out the full letter at the source.
