The business models of Uber, Lyft, Instacart, TaskRabbit, GrubHub and numerous other "gig economy" companies may need an overhaul following a decision by the California Supreme Court to redefine when someone is a contractor or an employee. In a decision this week that went against delivery company Dynamex Operations West, the …

The era of software-defined storage market is truly upon us. Forget city-sized enterprises looking to squeeze costs out of their data centre estate, Nexenta has scored big with Wag!, a US-based dog walking 'sharing economy' app for those that can't be arsed to exercise their pooch. Almost incredibly, Japanese multinational …

Dozy ride-share drivers juggling multiple jobs are putting people's lives at risk, according to a statement from the American Academy of Sleep Medicine (AASM) in the Journal of The Bleeding Obvious Clinical Sleep Medicine. While Uber’s self-driving cars have taken a bit of a bashing, in recent weeks the AASM’s department of …

Updated The EU’s top court has ruled against Uber in France, in a judgement that allows it and other member states to ban illegal taxi services like UberPop more easily. The ruling (PDF), issued by the Court of Justice of the European Union this morning, will increase pressure on the not-a-taxi biz, and follows a decision that saw its …

Uber apparently isn't burning cash fast enough, so the ride-share company has bought dockless bike-share outfit JUMP Bikes, with CEO Ryan Rzepecki coming along for the ride. In February, everybody's favourite it's-not-a-taxi provider tied up with San Francisco's JUMP so users of its apps could rent battery-powered bikes …

London Mayor Sadiq Khan has called for social networks and sharing economy platforms to act for social good, rather than profit. In a keynote speech at the SXSW festival in Austin, Texas, Khan laid some of the blame for increasing social division and nativist populism at the feet of technology companies. Social networks, he …

The author behind a high-profile study on how much Lyft and Uber pay their drivers has U-turned – and says the taxi apps cough up more cash than he previously claimed. Dr Stephen Zoepf, of the Stanford University Center for Automotive Research in the US, now hopes to work more closely with the pair of tech upstarts in the wake …

Usenix Enigma Gig economy workers – the fancy new way to describe short-term freelance serfs like Uber drivers and Deliveroo riders – are well in the sights of hackers. That's because they're surprisingly easy to phish. There's no corporate network to protect them. They usually sign up to a task-scheduling app using their personal email …

A draft UK law bill intended to close loopholes in so-called "gig economy" employment practices has been published today by Parliament's Work and Pensions and Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) Committees. The joint report and draft bill is intended to address the use bogus "self-employment" status as a route to …

Taxi firm Uber has today lost its appeal against a ruling that its drivers should be classed as workers rather than self-employed. In October 2016, the Central London Employment Tribunal ruled that two Uber drivers, James Farrar and Yaseen Aslam, were Uber staff and entitled to holiday pay, paid rest breaks and the minimum …

MPs have slammed the "bogus" self-employment practices of so-called gig economy companies – accusing the likes of Uber, Amazon and Deliveroo of passing the buck on to the welfare state. In a report published on Monday, Parliament's Work and Pensions Committee urged the British government to close loopholes exploited by gig …

Comment Perhaps it's time to retire the term "sharing economy" once and for all. The Confederation of British Industry (CBI) this week swallowed up the "gig economy" trade group Sharing Economy UK. "Sharing economy" was initially used to describe individuals trading under-utilised private assets or labour informally, on a peer-to-peer …

Unpaid workers for the "sharing economy" delivery outfit Jinn who claimed they hadn't been paid besieged the company's co-founder to demand their wages last week. The angry encounter was captured on video by Reg reader Gareth Davies. Couriers surrounded co-founder and chief operating officer Leon Herrera Saez-Benito outside …

User rating and review services provided by online platforms can help reduce the need to regulate the "sharing economy", according to a report by a US regulator. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) report (100-page / 2.26MB PDF), said, though, that the deployment of "trust mechanisms" alone might not "address externalities" …

Around 56 per cent of "gig economy" workers say the income they get from those services is essential to making ends meet. This according to a study from Pew Research, which interviewed 4,579 workers from various app-based services including dial-a-ride, cleaning and laundry, and food and grocery delivery apps. Pew estimates …

The Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission has upheld an $11,364,736 fine, the largest in its history, against Uber for running an unlicensed taxi operation and obstructing attempts to investigate the firm. The PUC issued the fine in May after finding that Uber had provided 122,998 trips to paying customers without receiving …

An Italian MP co-sponsoring Europe’s first legislation on “sharing economy” platforms tells us the bill ensures casual labour isn’t hit with swinging, punitive taxes. Professional services are already covered by existing legislation, says Stefano Quintarelli, an MP Italian Parliament for the Scelta Civica (“Civic Choice”) …

Italy has tabled Europe’s first, and most ambitious, legislation to tax and regulate internet platforms in the so-called “sharing economy”. The “sharing economy” euphemism is misleading, as companies like AirBnB and Uber are really “resource allocation intermediaries”, and could well monopolise social infrastructure in the …