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Comment by sandworm101 | Hacker News Reader

>> The county told NBC4 if Lucas had filled out the permit application, the owner could have learned about the shoot before he filmed there.

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.

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"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."

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.

> 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.

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.

What many don't realize is that a "porn shoot" doesn't film just the handful of scenes for one dvd or website. A well-run production company will bring in multiple teams to film perhaps dozens of sequences in a day. One truth about porn is that, like sitcoms, they do not require large sets. So it isn't difficult to squeeze multiple teams into a house. But the upside for neighbors is that those smaller sets don't need the generators and massive lighting rigs used to illuminate wide shots.

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 was involved in the porn industry, by a weird combination of life forces. Basically, my mom's boyfriend thought we could make some money. He was an Israeli immigrant, and desperately wanted to get out of landscaping.

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?

That does sound like LA in the 80s/90s. Things are a little different now. Since the internet (credit cards) it isn't a cash business anymore. They have also dropped any attempt at "movies" or even titles. Individual scenes are now standalone products for websites. And those websites do keep an eye on their material. The days of stealing a bunch of scenes to release a few hundred VHS cassettes to be sold for cash are gone.

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.

Actually that's not true. Surprisingly all the new names in the industry still package up their scenes and sell them as DVDs. I was surprised myself, being an internet-only kind of character, but physical medium is not dead.

heh. white out french tips manicure is so awesomely ratchet.

It sounds like a useful tactic would be to plaster your walls with art related to Disney/Marvel characters. This would make it a legal nightmare to film in without stripping the place bare.

Even better, mix in some QR code posters with illegitimate links to Marvel/Disney content. If even one somehow slips by the video editing crew, you're talking legal apocalypse.

No you're not. Scienter would apply.

Sure, but it would still create a legal mess and/or a large headache.

No it wouldn't cause anything at all. Nobody sane would sue for that because they might as well be taking a pile of money and setting it on fire.

>Nobody sane would sue for that because they might as well be taking a pile of money and setting it on fire.

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.

They only file those suits to get addresses, and use them to send out letters asking for cash not to sue. They usually don't sue anyone, and make a fortune.

>They usually don't sue anyone, and make a fortune.

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...

Sorry, but what connection is there between the P2P lawsuits and suing someone from shooting porn in an apartment that just happens to have a barely readable QR code on the wall put there by someone else?

You were suggesting major content holders are rational in regards to litigation. P2P lawsuits serve as a counterexample to that.

Familiarize yourself with the bulk P2P lawsuits, they're doing everything in their power to cut costs.

I'll get right on that, but first I have to bury this dead horse here.

>without stripping the place bare.

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.

> People will be having sex in your house even without the cameras. That's what people do.

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.

I agree. Don't want this to happen? Easy, don't rent your home out. Renting your home out comes with risks, and you do get rewarded for that risk, but there's still risks. Nobody is forcing you to rent it out.

You're not required to take every risk with no recourse. A renter might steal from you or leave a spy camera behind, but that's illegal. We could certainly make it illegal to shoot commercial video on someone else's property without their permission.

Rental agreements that disallow commercial use are a thing.

Much simpler and provides civil law recourse for this sort of usage.

Airbnb prohibits commercial videos/photos without permission, according to the article.

But what recourse does the homeowner have in that case? And being banned from AirBNB is not really a huge deterrent. Making the behavior illegal would give you more options if it happens to you, and might really make someone think twice.

The contract could have fines for breaking this rule, or the property owner could require guests to agree to a fine in an additional contract on top of the standard terms.

But the company has historically never had qualms about screwing their customers over, so I wouldn't hold my breath.

> The contract could have fines for breaking this rule

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.

> The contract could have fines for breaking this rule

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.

Can't you say that you charge $5000 for commercial use, which the client automatically accepts when they do a commercial activity in the house?

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."

Presumably having broken the terms of the agreement, you'd be able to sue them for any damages.

> Presumably having broken the terms of the agreement, you'd be able to sue them for any damages.

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 don't really understand why AirBnB has to be of help in this instance. Someone broke a contract and possibly vandalized a home. The truth of that statement and the penalties involved are enforceable directly through the court system.

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.

> Making the behavior illegal

Renting out residentially zoned property on AirBNB or shooting porn?

Homeowners already have a plenty of recourse in the case of damages. It's called, you know, courts?

In the case of non-damages, what recourse do you really need?

So someone should make a business of spotting real houses and telling on.

yeah, send me a full 3d model of your house and exterior and i'll watch the videos for you ;)

And most landlords and cities prohibit AirBnB-style rentals, but that has never stopped AirBnB.

Are you sure about that? You seem to missing any sort of a source.

Almost all AirBnB rentals in SF were illegal before 2015. [1] I'm not going to comb through every municipality in North America, but when your company's primary operations are breaking the law in the city you're based in, I think it's safe to say that you aren't particularly keen on following it.

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...

Pretty easy search turned this up. http://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/083115/top-ci...

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.

At least in L.A. it's already illegal to shoot in a rental property (such as a traditionally rented apartment) without the property owner's permission.

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.

> 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.

That most generally wouldn't be considered a commercial video shoot.

But why? Seriously, I don't see why this is an issue.

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...?

I think you are being too specific in what you are saying is an issue. If you rent out your house on AirBnB, you are not expecting commercial business to be done in your home. Would you be upset if someone rented your home on AirBnB and then ran a small sweatshop out of it? What if they used it as a temporary slaughter house for animals? The base fact is they used a private property for commercial purposes when they were not legally allowed to do so. To me the general issue is private use vs commercial use.

Or if an attorney rented the home for a week to meet with a client. Or even to shelter a client (think domestic violence) or shield their movements from reporters (celebs/royalty). That happens all the time, but remains commercial activity in a rented unit.

Why would any of those things be a problem as long as the house is either properly cleaned afterwards or the cleaning fees are paid.

Zoning regulations have been around for nearly a century. They caused a ruckus when they first appeared("Why can the government limit what I do with my personal property?"), but their legality is well-established by the Supreme Court.

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.

But selling videos of my house without asking me is different from just taking video.

I'm trying to frame this as less of a problem and more of an opportunity. Sadly, pornbnb.com is already registered. :(

Tell Mrs. Patmore that.

That's a straw man. While no one is forcing me to rent it out, it's common courtesy to let your landlord know of any activities you wish to pursue. After all, it's not your property you're staying in, there's a reason why you're renting it. After all, people rent out their homes on AirBnB for leisure. What porn film makers are doing is capitalizing on AirBnB rentals by circumventing not only regulations (not a fan of but sometimes it's necessary) but they're making a profit from your property. Not to mention the fact that they left this person's house a total mess which is already a dick move on the film makers part.

"Common courtesy" and "contracts" don't belong in the same conversation. It's a recipe for having people take advantage.

> What porn film makers are doing is capitalizing on AirBnB rentals by circumventing not only regulations (not a fan of but sometimes it's necessary) but they're making a profit from your property.

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 a straw man.

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 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.)

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.

> What porn film makers are doing is capitalizing on AirBnB rentals by circumventing not only regulations (not a fan of but sometimes it's necessary) but they're making a profit from your property

Filmmakers were doing this way before porn or AirBNB, it's called guerilla filmmaking - http://stagebuddy.com/film-tv/best-guerrilla-movies

>> After all, it's not your property you're staying in.

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.

You have an occupancy right -- a right to quiet enjoyment of your residence, with constraints on landlord entrance/interference under non-emergency conditions... not the same thing as property rights.

> People will be having sex in your house even without the cameras. That's what people do.

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

Non-porn people are very capable of making a real mess. Talk to any hotel cleaner. People get drunk, they bleed, they get sick and even die, the later being very rare in porn.

> Non-porn people are very capable of making a real mess. Talk to any hotel cleaner.

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.

I didn't mean sex, just that people can make a huge mess no matter what they are doing.

How so?

All those positions, all those retakes, on the couch, on the kitchen counters, in the stairwell.

Plus there tend to be additional people on set besides the actors, having takeout food, smoke breaks, etc.

People tend to have takeout in their hotel rooms, people tend to smoke (various things) in their hotel rooms, people throw TVs through their hotel room windows (and not only in movies).

Let's put it this way... its the equivalent to having a dance party in your hotel room as opposed to just having to dance with your significant other.

Sure, it is all 'dancing' but the quantity of people has a qualitative effect on behavior.

>its the equivalent to having a dance party in your hotel room

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.)

That's exactly what the AirBnB holders ought to charge. Of course that kind of stuff are business concerns which AirBnB sellers tend not to think about because in their minds they're not running a business.

https://www.airbnb.com/guarantee

AirBnB also has an option that enables you to set up a cleaning fee to be charged if necessary.

The point is that egregious violations of the Terms of Service (not to mention general decency) deserve egregious penalties in response.

Not just a "cleaning fee."

"Lucas contends that the film is the most expensive gay porn film ever made due to a budget of $250,000 and multiple celebrity cameos." -- your wikipedia link.

So, doesn't literally hold the world record.

If you're not going to any details your comment is literally worthless.

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.

This looks like a chain of telephone that leads to exaggeration. There's no need for prose telling us that if we saw the behind-the-scenes of a porn shoot, then we'd never want to watch porn again. That's extremely unlikely.

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.

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