Porn Industry Using Airbnb Rentals as Film Sets
nbclosangeles.com
nbclosangeles.com
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.
Much simpler and provides civil law recourse for this sort of usage.
But the company has historically never had qualms about screwing their customers over, so I wouldn't hold my breath.
It might have a liquidated damages clause if the use of and stipulated amount of liquidated damages was such as to be found reasonable for the type of breach it covers; otherwise, a "fine" in a contract is generally an unenforceable penalty clause.
Small legal point. Contracts are not allowed to impose fines. They can cite liquidated damages (what most people see as a fine) but they have to be rationally related to the damage done by the activity described. They cannot be arbitrary or elevated simply to deter unwanted behavior. Yes, this is and issue when it comes to "parking tickets" on private property.
500$ fee to accommodate a cleaning crew = 0k.
5,000$ fine for pain and suffering caused by naked people in someone's home = not enforceable.
After all, isn't that essentially how overdraft fees work? "Oh, you want to withdraw $2 when your balance is $1? That constitutes a request for a loan, for which we charge a $35 fee."
The "loophole" is there is no way to sue when the host is illegally subletting his apartment at first place. And a good bunch of Airbnb rentals are straight up illegal. Airbnb is a legal nightmare both for guests and hosts. Most of the time everything goes fine. But when things go wrong Airbnb is effectively of little help. That's the sharing economy, the risk is passed down to the user of these services, just like Uber, Kickstarter and co.
I am very wary of companies that try to 'help' by requiring 3rd party private arbitration instead of taking it through the established legal system.
Renting out residentially zoned property on AirBNB or shooting porn?
In the case of non-damages, what recourse do you really need?
There are no particular bylaws governing subletting in tenancy agreements, but almost all landlords forbid it. Mine does. Yours probably does, too. AirBnB has not, and will never do any due diligence in verifying that a renter's tenancy agreement permits short-term subletting - they prefer remaining ignorant of whether or not their units are legal.
[1] http://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/overview-airbnb-law-s...
There also exist services to ensure compliance - http://www.hostcompliance.com/
A quick google news search also turns up a lot of articles about cities banning / deciding on the legality of abnb.
Additionally, your post was likely downvoted because you dashed off an aggressive, cliched comment that could have been answered with less effort than it took to post to HN.
Still happens multiple times every day.
It's more a result of much smaller video crews than anything else these days.
Technically a lot of these youtube/podcaster people are in violation of local laws.
Somehow I doubt that. By that same law then a family recording themselves on Christmas eve and putting the video on YouTube for their friends and family to see are also violating the same law.
If I rent out my home and a couple stays there. I imagine some sex may happen there. I wouldn't care.
If I rent out my home and some people have sex on camera there, and the house is returned to me in the same state, I don't care.
Why do you believe this requires a law...?
Violations of these sort(zoning, not paying property taxes, etc.) attach liens to the property, not the owner or renter. So it can be hard to dodge the consequences if you get fined.
Granted, this argument doesn't apply in Houston, Texas which doesn't have zoning laws. So if the comment you're responding to truly believes his argument, he'd be forced to accept the practice in Houston.
What many people renting property out on AirBnB are doing is not only circumventing regulation (regarding, e.g., short-term occupancy rentals) and rental contract provisions (with their own landlords), but also making a profit from someone else's property.
AirBnB has largely grown, and knowingly leverages (with deliberate structure to try to keep the legal risks that result on other parties in the transaction), exactly this kind of evasion of regulatory and contract restriction to make profit off of other people's property.
So, while its been well-known to occur on the side of the transaction renting-out property via AirBnB, it shouldn't be too surprising that it happens on the other side of the transaction as well.
That's not a straw man. It is a rather cavalier and entitled attitude, however, and I agree with you that it should be common courtesy.
I have noticed a common attitude in the technology sector and amongst gamers, that if you can get away with it, then you are effectively allowed to do it, and if you're "smart," you'll heartlessly exploit all such opportunities that come your way. (Note that I am in the technology sector and would be called a "gamer" by many.)
Underlying such an attitude is the unspoken belief that being "smart" makes one superior to the average person and therefore somehow entitles one to such exploitation. My opinion is that people who express such attitudes are scum who will stab you in the back if the reward is great enough.
I think that attitude is found across the population in general, not just tech, not just gamers.
I've seen way too many people take the "better to ask for forgiveness than permission" tack with a lot of things in life.
Filmmakers were doing this way before porn or AirBNB, it's called guerilla filmmaking - http://stagebuddy.com/film-tv/best-guerrilla-movies
Actually, it is your land. You have a property right. It isn't eternal or unlimited, but while you are renting the location it is in fact "yours". Landlords are not allowed to run around on rental properties like they own them. They don't. Their rights are curtailed for the duration of the lease. This big deal when landlords start performing "random inspections" for things like grow ops.
You have a property right.
In other words, basically what major copyright holders do every time they file lawsuits against P2P users en masse. Seems to me they're already adept at setting large piles of money on fire.
Such practices do not appear profitable.[0]
Perhaps that's because the article is dated, but mass P2P lawsuits being unprofitable is congruent with their decline in recent years.
[0] http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2007/10/music-industry-ex...
Well they are shooting a porn movie, so why not try something new? It's boring if only the actresses/actors are stripping.
"Hot poster action! Uncensored walls! Naughty wallpaper laid bare!"
Or just pixelize. Japanese porn does it all the time.
Maybe even automate the task: Use computer vision to detect copyrighted posters, then apply a mosaic filter to them.
Hmm, if I understand you correctly, you are mistaken. If the permit is filed, the homeowner and the nearby homeowners will get paper notices taped to their doors a couple of days before the shoot (like this: http://www.wehodaily.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/filming-...). The property owner would see the notice, and neighbors push back against nearby filming here all the time, even if the property owner does not see the notice.
And also: commercial users of your property for shoots treat it much differently than casual travel users will. There will be a big crew, they will have bulky/heavy equipment, they will be focused on getting a job done and they won't care about dinging up your walls, etc., in the process. A week later, you will discover something broken.
Many people who let their home be used for shoots are in the industry (so they have built-in sympathy for the workers), or they are insensitive to damage because they are being paid a hefty fee, or they pay a specialist to manage their property during the shoot. They can do this because they will be paid several thousand dollars per day for the use of their home. The AirBnB rental fee would not approach this.
I imagine it's likely to be used as a location for some "reality" porn series (which are about as real as the average reality TV show). I can't imagine that requiring a lot of equipment or personnel.
That's traditional porn. The other side are the smaller websites, often dedicated to a single actress. They want a site they can film very quietly over a couple days, usually a weekend. This is one camera, one or two lights and never more than a handful of people. They can come and go without even a van, without anyone noticing anything. Some call this "amateur", but I think that term doesn't do these productions justice.
I felt his pain. I was recovering from a nervous breakdown, and needed a job that wouldn't physically wreck me.
We decided to sell video tapes. I'm not proud of it, but it happened. We flew down to Los Angeles, and went to the trade show. Every vendor was more slithery/slimey than the next.
I was trying to find one person I could trust, and it seemed like they were just all untrustworthy. I tried to keep an open mind.
We went to his childhood's friends house, who was supposedly a big deal in the porn video, now living big in LA. He offered us a business opportunity. It was basically give me 50 grand, and I'll set you up on the porn business. We stayed down there a week, and went to all the cd/video factories. We went to the print shops. We talked to the Photoshopers that made up the covers. We went to a few shoots.
What I learned, after I took a long shower. Yea, all the stereotypes were so true. I really went into it with an open mind. So what did I learn.
No one followed any Laws.
The shoots were Not permitted in any capacity.
Crew, even back then, the crew was small. A camera guy, and maybe an assistant. There's no such thing as Fluffers. I asked a Vice President from one of the bigger porn producers, and she said that's a myth. I will never forget her painting her nails with White-out. Really. And her final parting eloquent words, "I never pay retail!"
These are not cinematic masterpieces. You could shoot in a house, and it appeared as if no one was home.
They shot the new movies in rented houses. I don't think the owner had a clue what was going on. I hope they were rented. I felt like we were all trespassing some days.
In terms of movies. Well basically everyone stole from everyone else. They would seal footage, mix it around, and present it as original material. They would slap a slick cover on the video/dvd and sell it a new movie. They just didn't care about copyrights. They didn't care about anything besides making money. Their was a sence of gloom everywhere. It was not remotely sexy.
To make a long story short, my mom's boyfriend took the bait.
His best friend sold him a buch of beat up commercial vcrs. They literally had thousands of hours on them. Only about half of the machines worked. He supposedly bought the copyrights to 200 titles. Every on was out of copyright , or stolen. (I did warn my friend. I said we have been to three video facilities, and all the masters are the same? If the masters are so valuable why are they literally thrown around the facilities. Why arn't they in a safe?)
He tried to make it work, but he was scammed from the beginning. I did learn one lesson. When it comes to money, don't even trust your childhood best friend.
I helped him get the duplicating business started. I put in the electrical. All those lousy dublicating vcrs drew so many amps--the only thing we lucked out on was the building was wired for 480 volts. Twenty, twenty amp outlets, running #10 copper wire got the machine going. (I still can't figure out why the equipment shelfs were reading 90 volts. I made sure there was no metal to metal contact. I just couldn't figure it out. I had a guy with a EE degree from Berkley out and he couldn't fix the problem. We had 70 vcrs running. To this day I still don't know where that stray voltage came from. Maybe it was God saying no? That did run through my mind.)
Well he lost everything. Thank god most of it was credit card money, and he got an easy chapter 7 bankruptcy.
I will never forget the look on my mom's face when she asked me to photoshop a cover for Big Black Momma's house. She handed me the cd, and put her hands over her face. I told her, "Mom--he's not hurting anyone. I know it's embarrassing. Yes--your still a Christian."
She never told him, but was glad it ended, and he didn't become a porn mogal.
As to the original topic, if you are going to rent your home, it might be used in a porn film. Good luck getting anything out of these people--even if you did have a contract, and received a judgement.
To be honest, if a person rents out a house, they should able to do whatever they want in said house, as long as it's legal. If a person shoots a film in your rented house--oh, well? Get over it. You opened your home to strangers. As to morals--don't worry about other people. Worry about what you have the nerve to charge?
But some of the stereotypes remain. The girls are still treated like commodities to be managed and forgotten once they start speaking up about things like contracts.
Without getting too graphic, there's a HUGE difference between people having sex for fun and a professional porn shoot.
The latter is messy, smelly, and causes a surprising amount of lasting damage. There's a reason that so many porn studios film in hotels (and likewise, a reason that so many hotels refuse to rent rooms to people that they suspect will be filming there).
I won't go into details on HN because it's not really the venue, but let's just say this: if you knew what being "on site" at a porn shoot really looked, sounded, and smelled like, you'd never want to watch porn again[0].
(And we're not talking about an amateur porn shoot where people just film their "normal" sex on a webcam, either - Michael Lucas literally holds the world record for the most expensive gay porn film ever made[1]).
[0] Source: good friend of mine was in the industry for a while (behind the camera, not in front).
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Lucas'_La_Dolce_Vita
I'm well aware that sex can be messy, and I still maintain that professional pornographic shoots are far worse.
It sounds reasonable to compare the two, unless you've ever been on the set of a professional pornographic shoot.
Plus there tend to be additional people on set besides the actors, having takeout food, smoke breaks, etc.
Sure, it is all 'dancing' but the quantity of people has a qualitative effect on behavior.
This happens, a lot. Guess what happens afterwards? The hotel generally charges you a cleaning fee. (Which includes much more than just cleaning, but the days the room wasn't in an usable state etc.)
AirBnB also has an option that enables you to set up a cleaning fee to be charged if necessary.
Not just a "cleaning fee."
So, doesn't literally hold the world record.
I've been in a plenty of hotel rooms that suffered far worse damage than I could ever imagine a porn shoot causing. At least I've never watched any porn that involved throwing things through the window, setting the carpet on fire and the entire building reeking of weed.
If AirBNB wanted to quantify the risk of porn shoots, then they are in the best position for that kind of empiricism. The rest of us are speculating from very weak intuitions; just a bunch of posturing.
EXACTLY. Wtf do people think humans do when they go on vacation? Party, get fucked up and have a lot of sex. I'm always amused when people are shocked their sheets got dirty from renting out their unit on airbnb.
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-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-wein...). Coincidentally, this is again relevant to AirBnB because AirBnB (like dense housing development) has been viewed as a force for gentrification.
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.
No, you just need an active interested group and for everyone else to be indifferent or unaware.
>>"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?
> Using male condoms the right way, every time, can reduce (though not eliminate) the risk of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), including human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and viral hepatitis, as well as other diseases that may be transmitted through sex like Zika virus and Ebola. Using male condoms the right way, every time, can also help prevent pregnancy.
The existing safeguards aren't 100% but condoms aren't 100% either.
All you've really done by backing this is driving people to produce off the books and outside of the regulated area. All it did was add to their commute.
"Only OUR disruption is okay! Yours isn't!"
To be fair, that might happen anyway.
Uh, why does this comment have a negative score?
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.
(Source: I used to be in the photography industry and have done it.)
Ah. Something tells me this is the real crux of the article...
A lot of guys rent a room in hopes of just that. Why not make it explicit? Just sayin...