[studentrob]

Burning through VC money in the process? That's a risky move. Uber follows fingerprinting procedures in NYC and Houston, why not Austin? It seems to me Uber/Lyft are better off coming to the negotiation table to discuss a way forward.

[CamperBob2]

It's a lot riskier for the VCs to allow regulations like this to stand. Fingerprinting might be tolerable by itself, but this isn't really about fingerprinting, of course. Every major city whose regulators are wholly-owned subsidiaries of the taxi operators will come up with additional random expensive hoops to jump through, repeating as necessary until the competitor is run out of town. Anyone attempting to confront the incumbents with an innovative new service will suffer the death of a thousand cuts.

(Which, of course, will eventually work to Uber's advantage, just like it did for the taxi companies. At which point the hero has lived long enough to see himself become the proverbial villain.)

No, it's better to take a stand and fight these people head on. It's not OK to force every new business to decide whether it's safer to ask permission first or apologize later.

[studentrob]

U/L's position is not clear. Why operate with different rules in NYC? If they could articulate their desired policy to the public, maybe they'd find more support in Austin.