8 ms·

Porn Industry Using Airbnb Rentals as Film Sets

157 points by AndrewUnmuted 11y ago

ilek 11y ago
Hmm, unrelated but I hadn't realised you had laws at the county level too in the USA. I assumed it was federal and state only.
- Zikes 11y ago
  Goes all the way down to city level, even.
  - jsprogrammer 11y ago
    Some companies and private organizations will even create "by-law"s in an attempt to control you. Uh, why does this comment have a negative score?
    - Zikes 11y ago
      Yep, a homeowner's association could put a lien on your house if you broke their by-law about hanging a sports team flag on your front porch, for instance.
  - Amorymeltzer 11y ago
    In NYC, which is of course an outlier, the counties (each borough) are smaller and fall below the city level.
- jerf 11y ago
  And also a city/municipality/township level as well.
  - levemi 11y ago
    It gets even more specific than that, while home owner's associations don't generate laws that lead to criminal penalties when broken, the rules HOA's create are legally binding and have probably a significant impact on many people's quality of life and every day freedom. They are very personal rules and you can get in trouble for stupid things like leaving your garage door open or how you hang your laundry. People living with HOA's have opted for trading in freedoms for slightly higher property values.
    - dawnerd 11y ago
      My, soon to be ex, HOA decided they want to make rules regarding public roads. If they catch you parking on said public road, they will inspect your garage and issue heavy fines if you're storing anything in it.
    - dragonwriter 11y ago
      > It gets even more specific than that, while home owner's associations don't generate laws that lead to criminal penalties when broken, the rules HOA's create are legally binding and have probably a significant impact on many people's quality of life and every day freedom. HOA rules aren't laws of any kind; they are legally binding only because you have entered into a contract to obey them. > People living with HOA's have opted for trading in freedoms for slightly higher property values. Or, they have opted to live in modern homes: HOAs are usually established by developers, and virtually all new development (ISTR seeing figures of 80% in CA) is subject to HOAs.
- tgb 11y ago
  How influential counties are varies greatly from state to state. Where I'm from, there's no unincorporated land, it's all in towns. So the counties are relatively unimportant and town government is correspondingly more important. Elsewhere counties are highly influential.
- c3534l 11y ago
  You can even have sub-county regulations, too. You can have county taxes as well. But unless you're in a big city, they tend not to matter much apart from, like, not being allowed to have couches and garbage on your front lawn or something like that.
- charonn0 11y ago
  Federal, state, county, and city governments, and special districts (e.g. transit district, school district) all have some degree of legislative power.
waterlesscloud 11y ago
To be fair, the porn industry in Los Angeles has always used rental homes for sets.
- amelius 11y ago
  And to be fair, AirBnb is also breaking some laws here and there.
- scholia 11y ago
  The thing being that if you rent out somewhere for film or photography -- even if it's just a home or garden -- then you make a lot more money than if it's just for somewhere to stay. (Source: I used to be in the photography industry and have done it.)
sandworm101 11y ago
>> The county told NBC4 if Lucas had filled out the permit application, the owner could have learned about the shoot before he filmed there. Lol. The data on a form filed for a porn shoot at a particular location will not find its way into the hands of someone renting on airbnb. I'd be surprised if they are even digital. With due respect to homeowners, this is what happens if you rent your property. People will be having sex in your house even without the cameras. That's what people do. Owners may be embarrassed if their friends identify their home, but something is very wrong with this porn if people are noticing the architecture. It sounds like this did not involve a home, but unit owned for purposes of being rented out. A porn shoot does not want someone's home. They, like any other production, want a film set. That means little furniture, art, or other identifiable things. So I am not surprised to see this porn shoot occurred in a rental unit rather than someone's actual home. But they should certainly have done a better job cleaning up after themselves.
- AznHisoka 11y ago
  I agree. Don't want this to happen? Easy, don't rent your home out. Renting your home out comes with risks, and you do get rewarded for that risk, but there's still risks. Nobody is forcing you to rent it out.
  - sp332 11y ago
    You're not required to take every risk with no recourse. A renter might steal from you or leave a spy camera behind, but that's illegal. We could certainly make it illegal to shoot commercial video on someone else's property without their permission.
    - fweespeech 11y ago
      Rental agreements that disallow commercial use are a thing. Much simpler and provides civil law recourse for this sort of usage.
    - huac 11y ago
      Airbnb prohibits commercial videos/photos without permission, according to the article.
benten10 11y ago
The money-quote for me was: >>"When you force the industry from a well-equipped infrastructure like the Valley, with not only traditional sound stages, but a large number of easily rented homes where adult filming is permitted and encouraged, and push it to the margins, and to area and locations where people are not aware that adult film is being shot, you're seeing the beginning of an industry moving underground." AKA, you don't let us what we want to, we'll do things illegally. And that's the issue I have with all the 'disruption' (belch) happening around. Soo, the porn industry is 'disrupting' location/set industry. How long before we can expect to see our houses in mainstream cinema after having airbnb'd to some rando 3 years before?
- k-mcgrady 11y ago
  It's absolutely nothing to do with disruption. It's the result of taking something that is legal and making it illegal. Like prohibition in the US. Suddenly ban people from doing something they once could do and a black market will form.
- fweespeech 11y ago
  In this case, its more prohibition of a critical component of the porn industry [ no condom shoots ] that was necessary for them to be economically viable.
  - x0x0 11y ago
    lots of industries are more "viable" (profitable) if you allow them to kill workers
    - anigbrowl 11y ago
      The industry doesn't willingly kill workers. The whole mandatory HIV testing routine was originated within the industry. I know quite a lot of sex workers and they don't appreciate this so-called 'help' from people outside the industry.
    - fweespeech 11y ago
mturmon 11y ago
This is part of the churn due to the passage of Measure B in LA County, which mandates use of condoms on shoots. A lot of production has moved out of LA County in consequence (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Measure_B https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Measure_B), away from the established sets in the San Fernando Valley. All of this was predicted in advance. I was somewhat surprised the measure passed. It was pitched publicly as a good-for-performers health measure by its sponsor, the AIDS Healthcare Foundation (http://www.sfweekly.com/sanfrancisco/medical-privacy-sex-work-aids-healthcare-foundation-michael-weinstein-safer-sex-in-the-adult-film-industry-act-porn-gay-porn-condoms-a/Content?oid=4007341 http://www.sfweekly.com/sanfrancisco/medical-privacy-sex-wor...). This foundation, weirdly, is now spearheading an anti-development ballot initiative in Hollywood (http://www.advocate.com/hiv-aids/2016/1/13/ahfs-michael-weinstein-has-new-fight-and-its-not-about-hiv http://www.advocate.com/hiv-aids/2016/1/13/ahfs-michael-wein...). Coincidentally, this is again relevant to AirBnB because AirBnB (like dense housing development) has been viewed as a force for gentrification.
- c3534l 11y ago
  The measure probably passed in order to discourage porn from being shot there.
  - chimeracoder 11y ago
    > The measure probably passed in order to discourage porn from being shot there. That's a reasonable guess, but once you look at the pattern in Michael Weinstein's behavior, it's clear what his real motives are. Weinstein is the president of the AIDS Healthcare Foundation, which championed the initiative. The AHF has done good things in the past, but as of 2016, it's doing far more harm than good. Weinstein has a really puritanical view towards sex, and has a history of actively opposing harm-reduction approaches to HIV treatment and prevention. Despite the overwhelming amount of evidence in favor of pre-exposure prophylaxis in preventing HIV transmission, he has actively campaigned against it, intentionally spreading inordinate amounts of misinformation to discourage its use. His logic is basically, "we need to encourage condom use, and we should indoctrinate people into using condoms by ensuring that the porn they watch uses condoms". There are a lot of things wrong with this logic, not the least of which is that it's had no effect on the number of condoms used in porn shoots, as everyone now just shoots in Las Vegas or other nearby cities instead.
protomyth 11y ago
So, we have people with a business relationship to a company that flouts the law (many put their for property owner protection) renting to people making porn then getting mad there is no protection for property owners.
atirip 11y ago
It is called disruption.
frogpelt 11y ago
Tai Lopez uses rentals for his YouTube video sets too.
- rasz_pl 11y ago
  I like how googling this person brings up "Is Tai Lopez a scam?" at the top
  - randycupertino 11y ago
    lol. The only thing I know about him is everyone makes fun of the way he says "garrraaage" and "knawledge." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cv1RJTHf5fk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cv1RJTHf5fk
mannotbear 11y ago
I think we all knew this was coming... http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3146060/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3146060/
c3534l 11y ago
> An enema kit, bottle of lubricant and a business card To be fair, that might happen anyway.
kafkaesq 11y ago
The thing is it'd be very easy for Airbnb to fix this problem (more or less immediately) if they wanted to: "I agree not to us this dwelling for commercial purposes except as follows ...", leaving space for people to put down legitimate business uses such as remote software development. And then another section indemnifying Airbnb against suing them to collect legal damages, etc.
- Johnny555 11y ago
  From the article Airbnb prohibits commercial filming without the consent of the host and agreed to pay Knapic's cleaning fees. So it seems like just telling people not to do something in the contract is not going to stop them.
  - kafkaesq 11y ago
    Right -- that's why they should put some muscle into it.
Mikeb85 11y ago
> But Knapic is concerned about damage to her home's reputation, now suing Michael for a cut of the profits from his films. Ah. Something tells me this is the real crux of the article...
j1vms 11y ago
Still better off than one of those unwitting homeowners, albeit they were fictional of course, in Breaking Bad.
atrudeau 11y ago
I'd bet a lot of airboy renters would be willing forego rent in exchange for a turn. "Pay by visa, PayPal, ladies..." A lot of guys rent a room in hopes of just that. Why not make it explicit? Just sayin...

157 points by AndrewUnmuted 11y ago

ilek 11y ago

Hmm, unrelated but I hadn't realised you had laws at the county level too in the USA. I assumed it was federal and state only.

Zikes 11y ago
Goes all the way down to city level, even.
- jsprogrammer 11y ago
  Some companies and private organizations will even create "by-law"s in an attempt to control you. Uh, why does this comment have a negative score?
  - Zikes 11y ago
    Yep, a homeowner's association could put a lien on your house if you broke their by-law about hanging a sports team flag on your front porch, for instance.
- Amorymeltzer 11y ago
  In NYC, which is of course an outlier, the counties (each borough) are smaller and fall below the city level.
jerf 11y ago
And also a city/municipality/township level as well.
- levemi 11y ago
  It gets even more specific than that, while home owner's associations don't generate laws that lead to criminal penalties when broken, the rules HOA's create are legally binding and have probably a significant impact on many people's quality of life and every day freedom. They are very personal rules and you can get in trouble for stupid things like leaving your garage door open or how you hang your laundry. People living with HOA's have opted for trading in freedoms for slightly higher property values.
  - dawnerd 11y ago
    My, soon to be ex, HOA decided they want to make rules regarding public roads. If they catch you parking on said public road, they will inspect your garage and issue heavy fines if you're storing anything in it.
  - dragonwriter 11y ago
    > It gets even more specific than that, while home owner's associations don't generate laws that lead to criminal penalties when broken, the rules HOA's create are legally binding and have probably a significant impact on many people's quality of life and every day freedom. HOA rules aren't laws of any kind; they are legally binding only because you have entered into a contract to obey them. > People living with HOA's have opted for trading in freedoms for slightly higher property values. Or, they have opted to live in modern homes: HOAs are usually established by developers, and virtually all new development (ISTR seeing figures of 80% in CA) is subject to HOAs.
tgb 11y ago
How influential counties are varies greatly from state to state. Where I'm from, there's no unincorporated land, it's all in towns. So the counties are relatively unimportant and town government is correspondingly more important. Elsewhere counties are highly influential.
c3534l 11y ago
You can even have sub-county regulations, too. You can have county taxes as well. But unless you're in a big city, they tend not to matter much apart from, like, not being allowed to have couches and garbage on your front lawn or something like that.
charonn0 11y ago
Federal, state, county, and city governments, and special districts (e.g. transit district, school district) all have some degree of legislative power.

waterlesscloud 11y ago

To be fair, the porn industry in Los Angeles has always used rental homes for sets.

amelius 11y ago
And to be fair, AirBnb is also breaking some laws here and there.
scholia 11y ago
The thing being that if you rent out somewhere for film or photography -- even if it's just a home or garden -- then you make a lot more money than if it's just for somewhere to stay. (Source: I used to be in the photography industry and have done it.)

sandworm101 11y ago

>> The county told NBC4 if Lucas had filled out the permit application, the owner could have learned about the shoot before he filmed there. Lol. The data on a form filed for a porn shoot at a particular location will not find its way into the hands of someone renting on airbnb. I'd be surprised if they are even digital. With due respect to homeowners, this is what happens if you rent your property. People will be having sex in your house even without the cameras. That's what people do. Owners may be embarrassed if their friends identify their home, but something is very wrong with this porn if people are noticing the architecture. It sounds like this did not involve a home, but unit owned for purposes of being rented out. A porn shoot does not want someone's home. They, like any other production, want a film set. That means little furniture, art, or other identifiable things. So I am not surprised to see this porn shoot occurred in a rental unit rather than someone's actual home. But they should certainly have done a better job cleaning up after themselves.

AznHisoka 11y ago
I agree. Don't want this to happen? Easy, don't rent your home out. Renting your home out comes with risks, and you do get rewarded for that risk, but there's still risks. Nobody is forcing you to rent it out.
- sp332 11y ago
  You're not required to take every risk with no recourse. A renter might steal from you or leave a spy camera behind, but that's illegal. We could certainly make it illegal to shoot commercial video on someone else's property without their permission.
  - fweespeech 11y ago
    Rental agreements that disallow commercial use are a thing. Much simpler and provides civil law recourse for this sort of usage.
  - huac 11y ago
    Airbnb prohibits commercial videos/photos without permission, according to the article.

benten10 11y ago

The money-quote for me was: >>"When you force the industry from a well-equipped infrastructure like the Valley, with not only traditional sound stages, but a large number of easily rented homes where adult filming is permitted and encouraged, and push it to the margins, and to area and locations where people are not aware that adult film is being shot, you're seeing the beginning of an industry moving underground." AKA, you don't let us what we want to, we'll do things illegally. And that's the issue I have with all the 'disruption' (belch) happening around. Soo, the porn industry is 'disrupting' location/set industry. How long before we can expect to see our houses in mainstream cinema after having airbnb'd to some rando 3 years before?

k-mcgrady 11y ago
It's absolutely nothing to do with disruption. It's the result of taking something that is legal and making it illegal. Like prohibition in the US. Suddenly ban people from doing something they once could do and a black market will form.
fweespeech 11y ago
In this case, its more prohibition of a critical component of the porn industry [ no condom shoots ] that was necessary for them to be economically viable.
- x0x0 11y ago
  lots of industries are more "viable" (profitable) if you allow them to kill workers
  - anigbrowl 11y ago
    The industry doesn't willingly kill workers. The whole mandatory HIV testing routine was originated within the industry. I know quite a lot of sex workers and they don't appreciate this so-called 'help' from people outside the industry.
  - fweespeech 11y ago

mturmon 11y ago

This is part of the churn due to the passage of Measure B in LA County, which mandates use of condoms on shoots. A lot of production has moved out of LA County in consequence (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Measure_B https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Measure_B), away from the established sets in the San Fernando Valley. All of this was predicted in advance. I was somewhat surprised the measure passed. It was pitched publicly as a good-for-performers health measure by its sponsor, the AIDS Healthcare Foundation (http://www.sfweekly.com/sanfrancisco/medical-privacy-sex-work-aids-healthcare-foundation-michael-weinstein-safer-sex-in-the-adult-film-industry-act-porn-gay-porn-condoms-a/Content?oid=4007341 http://www.sfweekly.com/sanfrancisco/medical-privacy-sex-wor...). This foundation, weirdly, is now spearheading an anti-development ballot initiative in Hollywood (http://www.advocate.com/hiv-aids/2016/1/13/ahfs-michael-weinstein-has-new-fight-and-its-not-about-hiv http://www.advocate.com/hiv-aids/2016/1/13/ahfs-michael-wein...). Coincidentally, this is again relevant to AirBnB because AirBnB (like dense housing development) has been viewed as a force for gentrification.

c3534l 11y ago
The measure probably passed in order to discourage porn from being shot there.
- chimeracoder 11y ago
  > The measure probably passed in order to discourage porn from being shot there. That's a reasonable guess, but once you look at the pattern in Michael Weinstein's behavior, it's clear what his real motives are. Weinstein is the president of the AIDS Healthcare Foundation, which championed the initiative. The AHF has done good things in the past, but as of 2016, it's doing far more harm than good. Weinstein has a really puritanical view towards sex, and has a history of actively opposing harm-reduction approaches to HIV treatment and prevention. Despite the overwhelming amount of evidence in favor of pre-exposure prophylaxis in preventing HIV transmission, he has actively campaigned against it, intentionally spreading inordinate amounts of misinformation to discourage its use. His logic is basically, "we need to encourage condom use, and we should indoctrinate people into using condoms by ensuring that the porn they watch uses condoms". There are a lot of things wrong with this logic, not the least of which is that it's had no effect on the number of condoms used in porn shoots, as everyone now just shoots in Las Vegas or other nearby cities instead.

protomyth 11y ago

So, we have people with a business relationship to a company that flouts the law (many put their for property owner protection) renting to people making porn then getting mad there is no protection for property owners.

atirip 11y ago

It is called disruption.

frogpelt 11y ago

Tai Lopez uses rentals for his YouTube video sets too.

rasz_pl 11y ago
I like how googling this person brings up "Is Tai Lopez a scam?" at the top
- randycupertino 11y ago
  lol. The only thing I know about him is everyone makes fun of the way he says "garrraaage" and "knawledge." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cv1RJTHf5fk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cv1RJTHf5fk

mannotbear 11y ago

I think we all knew this was coming... http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3146060/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3146060/

c3534l 11y ago

> An enema kit, bottle of lubricant and a business card To be fair, that might happen anyway.

kafkaesq 11y ago

The thing is it'd be very easy for Airbnb to fix this problem (more or less immediately) if they wanted to: "I agree not to us this dwelling for commercial purposes except as follows ...", leaving space for people to put down legitimate business uses such as remote software development. And then another section indemnifying Airbnb against suing them to collect legal damages, etc.

Johnny555 11y ago
From the article Airbnb prohibits commercial filming without the consent of the host and agreed to pay Knapic's cleaning fees. So it seems like just telling people not to do something in the contract is not going to stop them.
- kafkaesq 11y ago
  Right -- that's why they should put some muscle into it.

Mikeb85 11y ago

> But Knapic is concerned about damage to her home's reputation, now suing Michael for a cut of the profits from his films. Ah. Something tells me this is the real crux of the article...

j1vms 11y ago

Still better off than one of those unwitting homeowners, albeit they were fictional of course, in Breaking Bad.

atrudeau 11y ago

I'd bet a lot of airboy renters would be willing forego rent in exchange for a turn. "Pay by visa, PayPal, ladies..." A lot of guys rent a room in hopes of just that. Why not make it explicit? Just sayin...