Laws don't change for the hell of it, certainly not because someone looks over the books and says "well thats silly". To get a law changed requires drawing mass attention to its silliness. Often times the best impetus is to get the public pissed off, taking away a service the public loves is a great way to piss them off.
Its a chicken and egg problem. There has to be igniting situation to get change to happen and a company can not operate 100% legally without the change occuring. As a result its sometimes in the company's best interest to ignite the fire themselves and eat any blow back.
I never said the law shouldn't be changed, it should. But just because a company is "first to market, cutting edge", does that make it exempt from regulation?
Given the New Years Eve pricing debacle, I'm glad regulation is being put in place. Taxi's are underserved and a horrible experience, but their pricing is both consistent and 100% transparent during and after the ride. Uber's pricing is a confusing mess. Time, demand, distance, and vehicle are all factors and you're only aware of the price after the ride.
Uber is not exempt, but they have the right to fight the laws with whatever legal means they can afford.
For any well developed market, radical innovations in productivity can almost assuredly be illegal. Standards of service must be set on a national level, not a mico one.
Imagine if every time you went to a different city, Uber's user experience changed drastically. You never knew what Uber would cost. Perhaps sometimes you had to do things that completely broke Uber's experience. Imagine if Boston's Uber app was just a button that said "call dispatcher" and then you had to pay cash at the end of the trip. Why bother?
Uber is not challenging the right of a municipality to issue rules or regulations. What they are challenging is an antiquated system of bureaucracy, for a specific market, which wastes both a city's budget and customer's time.
I think we will see the Uber strategy applied to a very wide rank of micro-regulated markets. And its going to work. The cities that "win" will lose, big time.
I see no reason for Uber to be exempt from the same regulations other services must abide by.