FYI in my country, at the top of this thread, that is how it works. Drivers need a "P" licence and the taxi companies need to register and follow some rules. But apart from that there are no limits or artificial restrictions.
That is one of the things that passes me off about all this. The enforcement agency did go after a bunch of drivers that were driving passengers for money without a "P" licence. Now, IIRC, Uber does require drivers to have a "P" licence.
But that same agency didn't do shit to Uber for operation of a taxi service without meeting the requirements.
Going after the little people is easy, but give up when the target has a bunch of VC money and lawyers.
We have a similar problem with our courier drivers. Everyone is "totally not an employee, they run their own independent business".
There should be no need to go after Uber, they probably shouldn't have to be the ones enforcing this. Uber can't verify if the driving license you've provided them is fake or not, at least the cops can do that.
Why should this enforcement be outsourced to Uber?
But uber ignored all that anyway.