Yeah I think there's a similar "loophole" in France but since everybody has a smartphone these days many taxis feel like it's unfair competition anyway. I'm kind of torn on this issue frankly, on one hand the taxis have had a de-facto monopoly for decades and as such ended up with a rather high price for a sub-par service so I'm glad uber shook them up a bit. On the other Uber is clearly playing dirty and we might end up being worse off in the end if taxi drivers don't manage to earn their life decently while most of our fare money ends up in some tax heaven never to be seen again.