I disagree. (Obviously, since I submitted the article.) The regulatory debate about Airbnb in New York as I had always heard it framed was about "outdated" hospitality regulations that needed to be "updated" to accommodate the sharing economy. In this context, I think it is widely assumed that the New York regulations are focused on sanitation, safety, etc. concerns for hotel guests. What this points out is that, in reality, the hospitality laws (at least in part) serve to prevent the extremely high demand for hotel rooms in new York City from gobbling up large chunks of housing inventory, thus driving up already-astronomical housing prices. Hence the ban on renting out whole apartments, or single rooms for more than 30 days: this sort of space could plausibly be used as residential housing for New Yorkers. New York would rather this capacity be sold on the residential housing market than made available for tourists on Airbnb. A person might disagree with this policy goal, but it does not strike me as archaic or obviously stupid.
Also, it is written by "the Editorial Board." That is, it is the "official" position of the newspaper. If you would like to know who is on the Editorial board, you can follow the link at the bottom of the article. Or this one: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/opinion/editorialboard.ht... It's interesting that you find this aspect of the editorial so objectionable because I believe, in most circles, an editorial by the Editorial Board of a publication is taken much more seriously than editorials by whomever the Editorial Board allows to write in their paper which do not necessarily reflect the view of the publisher.