
SF cracks down on ‘Monkey Parking’ mobile app - dmckeon
http://blog.sfgate.com/cityinsider/2014/06/23/sf-cracks-down-on-street-parking-cash-apps/
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pessimizer
At least one of these companies is a pure protection racket.

 _" ParkModo was recently offering $13 an hour to drivers who would occupy
parking spaces in the Mission District during peak weekend times and then sell
the spot through its app, a Craigslist job posting showed.

"'Get paid $13.00 per hour just to park!' the ad read. 'Our company is
launching an awesome app that rewards people to sell their on-street parking
spots before leaving to people who need a spot.'

"It went on to say that: 'Once you are parked, using the app, you will offer
the spot for sale. … Once someone purchases the spot, you will complete the
transaction with the buyer and then find another space to park in and start
the process all over again!'"_

It's as if AirBnB were paying people to burn down hotels.

~~~
TrainedMonkey
This is disgusting. Parking in SF is already not easy, and now this cancer is
moving in and exacerbating the problem.

~~~
cloakandswagger
Heh, I think you mean _exacerbating_

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incision
_> 'ParkModo was recently offering $13 an hour to drivers who would occupy
parking spaces in the Mission District during peak weekend times and then sell
the spot through its app, a Craigslist job posting showed.'_

Wow, I remember when parking spot squatting was the province of bold homeless
men near nightclubs.

This sort of rent-seeking on the commons is particularly distasteful, but
simply 'cracking down' on it seems like a wasted opportunity.

If the demand and divide are such that this is a real issue it seems like time
for a progressive congestion tax or similar. Collect and invest in
infrastructure.

~~~
thrownaway2424
SF already has the nation's most advanced parking space pricing system, called
SFPark. However, that is a low bar. The prices change very slowly and some
neighborhoods still have not found their equilibrium price (for example, a
busy stretch of Valencia has had its price increased in every adjustment round
and is now up to $6/hr. Nobody knows the equilibrium price for that area.)

There's also the problem that SFPark isn't very widespread because "local
merchants" who are a kind of caveman often oppose it.

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whence
Here's a better idea: charge market rate for parking on the street, citywide.
There's no reason that space should be given away for free.

Use the revenue to build some much needed trains.

~~~
mathetic
Roads are public goods and more importantly they are built with tax money.
They are also specifically built for cars to use and without a place to stop
they are a bit meaningless in a city.

They might just change this and start charging but that's a pretty stupid
idea. Free market is not an answer to everything.

~~~
jeffdavis
"Free market is not an answer to everything."

The problem here is one of rationing. There are a limited number of spots; who
gets them?

In the current situation, the spaces are free/subsidized, but you pay instead
by driving in circles. That's a big waste of time and adds to traffic
congestion. Maybe that's more "fair" in some sense, but that doesn't make it
good.

The app in question does either nothing or very little to help ration. It
allows people who really need to park, and have the money to pay for it, to be
more certain that they will get a space, which I guess is something. But it
creates so many bad incentives that it's making the problem worse, not better.

The city is in a better position to create market incentives, because they can
charge for the entire duration that you're in the space, not just the moment
you happen to park. That means people would have no reason to camp out in a
space waiting for the price to go up, which means more spaces will be
available for useful purposes. It saves time and congestion, but perhaps loses
out on some definitions of "fairness".

Any other ideas?

~~~
dllthomas
_' Maybe that's more "fair" in some sense, but that doesn't make it good.'_

I'm not even sure it's more "fair" \- as you said, you're still paying. I
suppose a part of the cost (time wasted) _is_ sort of indexed by income...

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coldcode
While I think some of what the city says makes sense, how can a city in the US
force a company in Rome to cease and desist? Even Apple might be loath to
follow this order since you can't follow every city and country on earth's
laws and stay in business.

~~~
anigbrowl
Because the company is operating in the US city, of course. Would it be OK to
sit in San Francisco and remotely run a service that was illegal in Rome? Of
course not, Italian prosecutors would issue demands and then seek a court
ruling that they would then ask US courts to enforce. This is the sort of
thing that international treaties are for.

EDI for clarity, of course there are no treaties about parking spaces. But
treaties usually include general provisions about courts recognizing each
others' judgments in criminal and civil matters, not least to prevent cross-
border financial fraud, tax evasion and so on. It's not foolproof because not
all territories have treaties, eg someone based in Somalia could run an
illegal internet business with relative impunity because the US has no
treaties with Somalia (as far as I know). On the other hand, countries that
have no criminal or commercial treaty relations with other countries tend to
be hellholes.

~~~
dublinben
Of course it's OK to run a service in the US that might be illegal abroad.
Twitter, Youtube, Facebook, etc. have all been banned, blocked, and threatened
by various foreign governments, even in nominally democratic countries.

US-based Internet companies have flourished due to the relatively hands-off
regulations concerning websites. To suddenly apply every foreign law that's
ever been written would be a significant chilling effect on business.

~~~
anigbrowl
Those services are not inherently illegal in other jurisdictions* for one
thing, and where specific activities have been deemed illegal the operators
either abide by the judgment of the courts or exit the market. Case in point:
Google allowing EU citizens to apply for delisting of privacy-infringing
search results in accordance with EU data protection laws.

* I'm not sure about places like North Korea, but trying to offer services there would be embargoed by domestic sanctions in any case.

~~~
dublinben
Google is a huge multinational company with sufficient nexus in the EU
(specifically France) to fall under the jurisdiction of that ruling. This
sounds like an app developed by a small team, physically and legally located
far outside of San Francisco. If the city tried to enforce a judgment against
them, it should be laughed out of court.

I'm not sure why so many here are so quick to throw the hackers under the bus
as soon as they agree with the government's demands. This kind of thing could
happen to anyone, and ruin any controversial startup.

~~~
anigbrowl
If you're doing business somewhere, as ParkingMonkey is in SF, then there's
sufficient nexus for them to come under the jurisdiction of that place.

So what if it's a small team offering this service remotely? What stops them
deploying this in their home town of Rome? And what makes you so sure that
claims against them would be laughed out of court? True, any judgment against
them would take a long time to enforce, hence the city exploring the more
practical route of asking Apple to cease enabling their activity. But cross-
border litigation happens all the time.

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microcolonel
They're not selling the spots, they're selling prior knowledge of their
departure. They have no right or means to block or make exclusive the spots,
so what's the problem?

~~~
anigbrowl
The law prohibits selling or contracting around public parking spaces, ie
contracts formed for the purpose of exploiting a public resource are
automatically void.

The app itself invites users to 'request a parking spot' and asks 'how much
would you pay?' The knowledge of imminent departure is just an instrumentality
for gaining occupancy of the parking spot, to claim otherwise is disingenuous.
There's a mentality among some hackers that 'the means justify the ends,' ie
if you can find some definitional wiggle room on what you're doing it
automatically validates the outcome. That works OK on computers, but the law
is not a big computer system and does not operate on the same sort of binary
logic as computers do.

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sukuriant
"MonkeyParking and any motorists using the app face fines of $300 per
violation of the city’s law prohibiting selling or contracting for parts of a
public street, according to the city attorney."

I was going to ask what the actual law was, but it seems I've found some
version of the gist of it here. Where I live (not San Fransisco) we have
privatized parking in plots of land that aren't on the public street. Would
using this app on places like that in SF be legal?

~~~
mahyarm
I can park nearly all day at moscone center with little time investment for
$20-$30, why the hell would I use this then?

~~~
sukuriant
You wouldn't :) but, it can be hard to find a parking spot in, for example,
Seattle on a Friday night.

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dmckeon
Previous discussion at:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7702659](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7702659)

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bitlord_219
Good. The idea of a couple guys in Italy making money on trades of public
parking spaces in SF baffles me. I assume they're not paying any taxes back to
the city that maintains the spaces. How does one possibly defend this?

~~~
gizmo686
They are proving value by solving a market inneficiency (a good, parking
spaces, being available at sub-market rates, free). As such, they have a right
to some of the profits.

By increasing the cost of parking spaces, they improve the efficiency of
allocation by making sure they go to people who value them at $20 before
people who value them at 0.003$

Or, more likely, they live outside of US juristiction, so they have plenty of
time to make a profit, and when the law does catch up to them, they are likely
not looking at anything worse then needing to shut down the service.

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smackfu
Here's the letter (PDF):
[http://www.sfcityattorney.org/modules/showdocument.aspx?docu...](http://www.sfcityattorney.org/modules/showdocument.aspx?documentid=1669)

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smoyer
San Francisco's attorney further stated that they believe it's illegal for
anyone outside northern California to create an iPhone application or any web-
based property. When asked for additional insight he responded "We've studied
the situation and believe we have world-wide jurisdiction to applications
running on mobile devices and computers used in our city".

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PhasmaFelis
I can't really see any moral difference between this and , say, ticket
scalping.

