It's a spectrum. Compare Airbnb to Craigslist, VBRO, or HomeAway. Airbnb layers on additional services: payment processing, mainly. Some ratings data as well, b

It's a spectrum. Compare Airbnb to Craigslist, VBRO, or HomeAway. Airbnb layers on additional services: payment processing, mainly. Some ratings data as well, but VBRO has that, too. Not wildly different, and—at least in my mind—Airbnb "hosts" aren't "independent hoteliers under a central brand". Here's another interesting hospitality analog: all the big chains are franchises. If I own a Marriott in Des Moines and don't pay my taxes or follow building codes, is Marriott International liable? (I really don't know: "it's complex" is probably the real answer.) Uber is a step further towards the service economy. In all these cases, and going back to my central thesis here: "local laws are not set up for national marketplaces". I think these guys do bear some responsibility, but at the same time, you can't just require them and individuals to follow the current process because it doesn't work. Taxi medallions in NYC cost a million dollars. I think Airbnb and Uber are incentivized to build checks into their systems, because they add assurances to their customers: both suppliers and users.