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.
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.