
Airbnb to purge illegal hotels from San Francisco listings - juanplusjuan
http://www.sfgate.com/business/article/Airbnb-to-purge-illegal-hotels-from-San-Francisco-7223613.php
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methodover
I think it's incredibly ironic that San Francisco, the source of so much
innovation lately, also seems to hate letting the free market just work. If
people want to rent out their place, just let them. Economic freedom used to
be a liberal value, didn't it?

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ryguytilidie
You believe its "ironic" that a group of people whos foundation is "liberty
and equality" don't want to "just let free markets work"?

Seems like a bit of a stretch...

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nxzero
Let me get this right, to subvert the system, all that's required is not to
put the listings under in there own accounts going forward and not use a name
that Airbnb had seen before; am I missing something?

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ChuckMcM
Hasn't that always been true? A company has to enforce the system in order to
remove itself from liability from the enforcement of the rules, it does that
by following the strict letter of the law. I don't believe the San Francisco
laws put any burden on AirBnB to investigate each of its hosts to verify they
are not false fronts protecting the same entity. Once an entity has done that,
AirBnb is not liable for them breaking the law (no doubt they require the
hosts to sign an affidavit that they are complying with the existing laws)

Ideally Airbnb will be good citizens and monitor things like multiple hosts
having the same mailing address or telephone number, that is something all
businesses should do. But you can't burden them with the investigative
requirement to identify people who are willfully acting as bad actors.

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AnthonyMouse
> Ideally Airbnb will be good citizens and monitor things like multiple hosts
> having the same mailing address or telephone number, that is something all
> businesses should do.

Why should that be suspicious? It's conceivable that someone would run a
rental management business with multiple clients that would each list the
management company as their mailing address and contact number.

It also doesn't seem like it would do much good, since it's a simple matter to
get arbitrarily many different phone numbers or PO box numbers (or PO box
equivalents that don't parse as PO boxes if PO boxes aren't allowed).

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stale2002
This whole controversy is all over "500 listings" !?!?

What if the city just allowed people to build 500 more homes?

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beatpanda
But then Tim Redmond might have his view of the Bay obstructed, and his
personal view of the Bay is a "public resource!" OFF THE GENTRY etc etc

