Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Porn Industry Using Airbnb Rentals as Film Sets

nbclosangeles.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 123 posts

Re: Porn Industry Using Airbnb Rentals as Film Sets

#101

Post by pessimizer »

c3534l wrote: post #97
chimeracoder wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The measure probably passed in order to discourage porn from being shot there. 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 rea…

That's one person and you need an entire electorate to enact a proposition. Many (but not all) probably would have voted for an outright ban.

> you need an entire electorate to enact a proposition.

No, you just need an active interested group and for everyone else to be indifferent or unaware.

Re: Porn Industry Using Airbnb Rentals as Film Sets

#102

Post by pessimizer »

benten10 wrote: post #13

The money-quote for me was: >>"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." A…

This is a useless attitude to have: the porn industry is not a unit, and doesn't move as a unit, it moves or forms where it is possible and profitable. If you make raw milk illegal, raw milk commerce will go underground. It's nothing personal, and demanding loudly that it stop is like telling gravity to stop.

Re: Porn Industry Using Airbnb Rentals as Film Sets

#103

Post by rl3 »

pessimizer wrote: post #100
rl3 wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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...

Re: Porn Industry Using Airbnb Rentals as Film Sets

#104

Post by DrScump »

sandworm101 wrote: post #77
hipsterrific wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>> 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"…

  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.

Re: Porn Industry Using Airbnb Rentals as Film Sets

#105

Post by threatofrain »

chimeracoder wrote: post #42
sandworm101 wrote: post #9

>> 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 ha…

> 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 peop…

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.

Re: Porn Industry Using Airbnb Rentals as Film Sets

#106

Post by true_religion »

sandworm101 wrote: post #95
marincounty wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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…

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.

Re: Porn Industry Using Airbnb Rentals as Film Sets

#107

Post by true_religion »

aikah wrote: post #78
jdminhbg wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 he…

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.

Re: Porn Industry Using Airbnb Rentals as Film Sets

#108

Post by true_religion »

chimeracoder wrote: post #54
sandworm101 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

How so?

Re: Porn Industry Using Airbnb Rentals as Film Sets

#109

Post by true_religion »

ryanlol wrote: post #90
kafkaesq wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Re: Porn Industry Using Airbnb Rentals as Film Sets

#110

Post by MichaelBurge »

ryanlol wrote: post #91
ChrisBland wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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.

Post reply on HN