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First, the YouTube comparison is far less appropriate than you suggest. The Digital Millennium Copyright Act contains a safe harbor that is designed to shield i

First, the YouTube comparison is far less appropriate than you suggest. The Digital Millennium Copyright Act contains a safe harbor that is designed to shield internet service providers from liability associated with copyright infringment provided that they meet certain criteria. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit determined that YouTube was protected by this safe harbor. Second, and more importantly, you seem to neglect the fact that some AirBnB hosts are not just violating laws, but their leases and HOA rules. These are legally-binding contracts between private individuals. AirBnB's most ardent supporters like to focus on zoning and hospitality laws, suggesting that they're antiquated, anti-competitive, etc. Some of these arguments are quite reasonable in my opinion, but what about private contracts? I have yet to see convincing arguments around the issue of hosts who are violating their contracts with their landlords and/or homeowners associations. Most apartment leases have strict terms around subletting and many HOAs have restrictions around property use that would be in conflict with AirBnB-style short term rentals. Even if AirBnB doesn't have a legal obligation to help enforce these, given the number of listings that are ostensibly governed by leases and/or HOA rules, it seems implausible that AirBnB isn't aware that a good number of its hosts are breaking private contracts, potentially exposing those hosts, their neighbors and even their "guests" to a variety of risks. Does AirBnB not have a moral obligation to address this? I'd love to see more AirBnB supporters take on this issue. At least it would be more entertaining and perhaps even more enlightening than the recurrent arguments against zoning and hospitality laws.

nostromo 12y ago
Why is it Airbnb's job to police their listings for HOA and lease violations? Surely that responsibility is the host's.
- DanBC 12y ago
  How does US insurance work? Some people are not going to be covered by insurance during a sub-let. Those people might be the host or guest or apartment owner; but in the case of catastrophe someone is going to lose out. So there is some value to customers of having listings vetted by AirBnB so that everyone knows that the sub-let is legal and insured.
- doxcf434 12y ago
  Hardly Airbnb related either, here's a response I got back from a craiglist ad for a temporary sub-lease (that I declined): > My place is available for the whole month of June, and is located at xxxx. Subletting isn't technically allowed at the building, so you would need to be careful around the staff.
- 7Figures2Commas 12y ago
  I was expecting a response like this, and it completely misses the point of my comment. Notwithstanding the potential benefits to hosts and guests in ensuring that activity on AirBnB is above board, I focused on a simple question: even if AirBnB doesn't have a legal obligation to help enforce private contracts, does AirBnB not have a moral obligation to address the issue because it is almost certainly aware that a good number of its hosts are violating them? It seems like your response is "AirBnB has no moral obligation to try to discourage its hosts from violating an agreement it knows likely exists", but I'm curious as to why you chose to throw this back to me as a question rather than stating a concrete opinion. Do you hold other companies to this same standard, and are you comfortable stating on record that what's good for the goose is always good for the gander? If so, why disguise your opinion as a question? On the point of corporate morality, I'd note that companies in certain industries are frequently lambasted for acting amorally. Just look in finance. Big banks, mortgage lenders, hedge funds, high frequency traders. They face almost constant criticism for engaging in behavior or failing to prevent behavior, even when their actions do not violate the letter of the law. Are there no AirBnB supporters who have criticized other companies for amoral behavior?
  - resu_nimda 12y ago
    At least, with the finance industry, those entities are directly perpetrating and in control of the immoral behavior, rather than acting as a proxy/facilitator for entities that might be doing it. I would think this situation is more akin to hosting copyrighted content, where we're finding that service providers aren't held liable (morally or legally) as long as they comply with requests to take down specific offending material. As a side note, look how often that criticism of the finance industry amounts to any real effect on those companies. If that's the model we're looking at, the prevailing wisdom says to just do it and ignore the critics. Also I think most people just aren't that concerned about the sanctity of HOAs and residential lease agreements (compared to, say, the global economy), and those are easier to amend and negotiate on than laws.
    - Spooky23 12y ago
      That's really splitting hairs. It's pretty obvious that turning an apartment into a hotel room is a legal problem in many if not most instances. Making the claim that "people just aren't that concerned about the sanctity of HOAs and residential leases" is just plain delusional. You'll get concerned when your lease gets terminated or the HOA takes up action against you. The whole situation is a moral hazard -- the owner/lessee of the apartment/house bears almost all of the risks. AirBnB just needs to keep the PR machine churning. That's why they have figured out how to verify the identity of renters (to address the issue of some sort of psycho serial killer renting rooms), but still find it impossible to confirm that lessees of property can in fact rent those rooms.
- amirmc 12y ago
  > "Surely that responsibility is the host's." So are good quality photos in order to get bookings. Yet Airbnb will make an effort to send a proper photographer around. https://www.airbnb.com/info/photography https://www.airbnb.com/info/photography
gojomo 12y ago
Contract terms, like laws, might be outdated or imbalanced, like when they're based on fears from an age with far less of our modern credit/reputation/identity-monitoring, or when circumstances have changed significantly since their negotiation (or in the case of residential leases, rote templatization). Thus there's the idea of "efficient breach" - where the right thing to do might be to break the terms and compensate the counterparties, leaving everyone better off: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Efficient_breach http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Efficient_breach There are many tiny breaches of leases and other contracts that leave society better off: looking the other way if a small pet or temporary houseguest arrives, or there's an occasional bit of "medicine smoking" on the premises, or some unapproved property improvements. It's tough to work up moral outrage if there's no evidence of actual harm, just technical violations. Compare malum prohibitum vs. malum in se: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malum_prohibitum http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malum_prohibitum http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malum_in_se http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malum_in_se
- tptacek 12y ago
  A contract is an agreement between two private individuals. If one of those individuals believes that the terms of the contract are antiquated and thus cannot honestly provide an assurance of honoring them, that person is ethically bound not to execute the contract. All the Latin in the world doesn't get you around that. While some cities will probably revise occupancy and hospitality regulations to accommodate things like Airbnb, the tension between renters and landlords w/r/t/ sublettors is quite old and quite well explored by the courts (check out your local tenants union for chapter-and-verse citations). The lease provisions that forbid Airbnb will stand up in court.
  - lesterbuck 12y ago
    >A contract is an agreement between two private individuals. If one of those individuals believes that the terms of the contract are antiquated and thus cannot honestly provide an assurance of honoring them, that person is ethically bound not to execute the contract. All the Latin in the world doesn't get you around that. That is really a very simplistic view of the real world of real estate. For example, in 1983 when I bought a Houston house, I read every scrap of paper involved in the transaction. (Title company closers call us "readers.") The faded Nth generation copy of the deed restrictions ("an agreement between two private individuals") had horrific language about not allowing those of other than the white race to live in the property (unless in servants quarters). By that time, that language had been neutralized by the Supreme Court, but there was a good period of time where it had legal force but had to be ignored by those of good conscience. George W. Bush got the one news cycle treatment about that as the same language was in the deed restrictions he signed, as well as in many subdivisions from that era. That language carries on in the record forever.
stonemetal 12y ago
Doesn't that make Youtube a perfect example? It existed before the DMCA. The safe harbor provision was written specifically to protect websites like it because the owners of such sites had an influence on how the laws were written.
- jrochkind1 12y ago
  I don't think so. Looks like the DMCA was passed in 1998 [1], well before YouTube was created in 2005 [2] [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Millennium_Copyright_Act http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Millennium_Copyright_Ac... [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YouTube http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YouTube

nostromo 12y ago

Why is it Airbnb's job to police their listings for HOA and lease violations? Surely that responsibility is the host's.

DanBC 12y ago
How does US insurance work? Some people are not going to be covered by insurance during a sub-let. Those people might be the host or guest or apartment owner; but in the case of catastrophe someone is going to lose out. So there is some value to customers of having listings vetted by AirBnB so that everyone knows that the sub-let is legal and insured.
doxcf434 12y ago
Hardly Airbnb related either, here's a response I got back from a craiglist ad for a temporary sub-lease (that I declined): > My place is available for the whole month of June, and is located at xxxx. Subletting isn't technically allowed at the building, so you would need to be careful around the staff.
7Figures2Commas 12y ago
I was expecting a response like this, and it completely misses the point of my comment. Notwithstanding the potential benefits to hosts and guests in ensuring that activity on AirBnB is above board, I focused on a simple question: even if AirBnB doesn't have a legal obligation to help enforce private contracts, does AirBnB not have a moral obligation to address the issue because it is almost certainly aware that a good number of its hosts are violating them? It seems like your response is "AirBnB has no moral obligation to try to discourage its hosts from violating an agreement it knows likely exists", but I'm curious as to why you chose to throw this back to me as a question rather than stating a concrete opinion. Do you hold other companies to this same standard, and are you comfortable stating on record that what's good for the goose is always good for the gander? If so, why disguise your opinion as a question? On the point of corporate morality, I'd note that companies in certain industries are frequently lambasted for acting amorally. Just look in finance. Big banks, mortgage lenders, hedge funds, high frequency traders. They face almost constant criticism for engaging in behavior or failing to prevent behavior, even when their actions do not violate the letter of the law. Are there no AirBnB supporters who have criticized other companies for amoral behavior?
- resu_nimda 12y ago
  At least, with the finance industry, those entities are directly perpetrating and in control of the immoral behavior, rather than acting as a proxy/facilitator for entities that might be doing it. I would think this situation is more akin to hosting copyrighted content, where we're finding that service providers aren't held liable (morally or legally) as long as they comply with requests to take down specific offending material. As a side note, look how often that criticism of the finance industry amounts to any real effect on those companies. If that's the model we're looking at, the prevailing wisdom says to just do it and ignore the critics. Also I think most people just aren't that concerned about the sanctity of HOAs and residential lease agreements (compared to, say, the global economy), and those are easier to amend and negotiate on than laws.
  - Spooky23 12y ago
    That's really splitting hairs. It's pretty obvious that turning an apartment into a hotel room is a legal problem in many if not most instances. Making the claim that "people just aren't that concerned about the sanctity of HOAs and residential leases" is just plain delusional. You'll get concerned when your lease gets terminated or the HOA takes up action against you. The whole situation is a moral hazard -- the owner/lessee of the apartment/house bears almost all of the risks. AirBnB just needs to keep the PR machine churning. That's why they have figured out how to verify the identity of renters (to address the issue of some sort of psycho serial killer renting rooms), but still find it impossible to confirm that lessees of property can in fact rent those rooms.
amirmc 12y ago
> "Surely that responsibility is the host's." So are good quality photos in order to get bookings. Yet Airbnb will make an effort to send a proper photographer around. https://www.airbnb.com/info/photography https://www.airbnb.com/info/photography

gojomo 12y ago

Contract terms, like laws, might be outdated or imbalanced, like when they're based on fears from an age with far less of our modern credit/reputation/identity-monitoring, or when circumstances have changed significantly since their negotiation (or in the case of residential leases, rote templatization). Thus there's the idea of "efficient breach" - where the right thing to do might be to break the terms and compensate the counterparties, leaving everyone better off: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Efficient_breach http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Efficient_breach There are many tiny breaches of leases and other contracts that leave society better off: looking the other way if a small pet or temporary houseguest arrives, or there's an occasional bit of "medicine smoking" on the premises, or some unapproved property improvements. It's tough to work up moral outrage if there's no evidence of actual harm, just technical violations. Compare malum prohibitum vs. malum in se: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malum_prohibitum http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malum_prohibitum http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malum_in_se http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malum_in_se

tptacek 12y ago
A contract is an agreement between two private individuals. If one of those individuals believes that the terms of the contract are antiquated and thus cannot honestly provide an assurance of honoring them, that person is ethically bound not to execute the contract. All the Latin in the world doesn't get you around that. While some cities will probably revise occupancy and hospitality regulations to accommodate things like Airbnb, the tension between renters and landlords w/r/t/ sublettors is quite old and quite well explored by the courts (check out your local tenants union for chapter-and-verse citations). The lease provisions that forbid Airbnb will stand up in court.
- lesterbuck 12y ago
  >A contract is an agreement between two private individuals. If one of those individuals believes that the terms of the contract are antiquated and thus cannot honestly provide an assurance of honoring them, that person is ethically bound not to execute the contract. All the Latin in the world doesn't get you around that. That is really a very simplistic view of the real world of real estate. For example, in 1983 when I bought a Houston house, I read every scrap of paper involved in the transaction. (Title company closers call us "readers.") The faded Nth generation copy of the deed restrictions ("an agreement between two private individuals") had horrific language about not allowing those of other than the white race to live in the property (unless in servants quarters). By that time, that language had been neutralized by the Supreme Court, but there was a good period of time where it had legal force but had to be ignored by those of good conscience. George W. Bush got the one news cycle treatment about that as the same language was in the deed restrictions he signed, as well as in many subdivisions from that era. That language carries on in the record forever.

stonemetal 12y ago

Doesn't that make Youtube a perfect example? It existed before the DMCA. The safe harbor provision was written specifically to protect websites like it because the owners of such sites had an influence on how the laws were written.

jrochkind1 12y ago
I don't think so. Looks like the DMCA was passed in 1998 [1], well before YouTube was created in 2005 [2] [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Millennium_Copyright_Act http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Millennium_Copyright_Ac... [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YouTube http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YouTube