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

Notorious Airbnb squatter may be the dev behind two flailing Kickstarter games

polygon.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 98 posts

Re: Notorious Airbnb squatter may be the dev behind two flailing Kickstarter games

#31

Post by _delirium »

gerner wrote: post #19

In some ways, this is the dark side of disrupting established industries: legal protections aren't in place yet; it's not clear what recourse people caught in never before seen corner cases have. We (e.g. HN folks) are quick to applaud people with new ideas that are shaking things up (e.g. Airbnb, Uber, etc.) I suspect this is the sort of scenario detractors (e.g. Seattle City Council re: Uber) are worried about. Ter…

I'm not sure these are "never before seen corner cases". This kind of stuff is pretty much Landlording 101, and it's standard practice for someone engaged in renting a property to know about eviction laws. This person wasn't even engaging in what you might call the new, casual-sharing-of-personal-possessions style of rental, where someone rents their own personal apartment out occasionally while they're on vacation. She was just doing the old-school landlord thing: she bought an investment property she did not live in, and was renting it full-time for profit. That is a line of business in which you can buy and read books, customized to your state, telling you exactly the basics you should know about!

Re: Notorious Airbnb squatter may be the dev behind two flailing Kickstarter games

#32

Post by 7Figures2Commas »

gerner wrote: post #19

In some ways, this is the dark side of disrupting established industries: legal protections aren't in place yet; it's not clear what recourse people caught in never before seen corner cases have. We (e.g. HN folks) are quick to applaud people with new ideas that are shaking things up (e.g. Airbnb, Uber, etc.) I suspect this is the sort of scenario detractors (e.g. Seattle City Council re: Uber) are worried about. Ter…

> In some ways, this is the dark side of disrupting established industries: legal protections aren't in place yet...

That's simply not true. The homeowner voluntarily agreed to rent her home to someone for more than 30 days. On the 30th day, that person became a tenant and gained certain rights under the law. The homeowner still has legal rights of her own, but the nature of the rental she agreed to means that she will have to engage in a more involved process to evict the tenant. If the homeowner did not want to deal with this type of scenario, she had every right not to rent her home for 30+ days.

In short, this has nothing to do with disruption or a lack of legal protections. Notwithstanding the fact that some AirBnB properties are being rented in violation of local laws and leases, AirBnB is simply a channel for marketing rental properties. The law already provides landlords and tenants with protections and obligations and every serious party engaged in the rental business is familiar with these laws. This story has everything to do with a homeowner engaging in a business she clearly knew nothing about.

Re: Notorious Airbnb squatter may be the dev behind two flailing Kickstarter games

#33

Post by thekevan »

This is a bit of a tangent, but what would there be to stop the woman who owns the condo to start signing 28 day leases with hundreds of other people? Imagine if dozens of good citizens showed up to the apartment at once, with a key, any time they wanted. They could just hang out and of course they also had a lease and a legal right to be there, so the original two couldn't do much, could they? That would make it much less attractive to those squatters.

Could it really be that easy?

Re: Notorious Airbnb squatter may be the dev behind two flailing Kickstarter games

#34

Post by lotu »

aikah wrote: post #13
lingben wrote: post #6

kickstarter is scammer heaven

Totally.I wonder if someday backers could sue the plateform itself after a fraudulent kickstarter, right now this website is running faster than the law.

Honestly I expect that could kill Kickstarter. Backers can sue the creators and there is at least one lawsuit that has been brought by the New York Attorney General.

Re: Notorious Airbnb squatter may be the dev behind two flailing Kickstarter games

#35

Post by joeframbach »

McGlockenshire wrote: post #9
darren884 wrote: post #8

Whatever happened to physically grabbing someone and violently throwing them out of your house?

See the previous coverage for the long version, but the tl;dr is that renters that rent for more than 30 days are protected as tenants by California law, including (normally proper) long drawn-out eviction proceedings.

Do you think Airbnb should make it difficult or impossible to put a room for rent for more than 30 days, then?

Re: Notorious Airbnb squatter may be the dev behind two flailing Kickstarter games

#36

Post by _delirium »

thekevan wrote: post #33

This is a bit of a tangent, but what would there be to stop the woman who owns the condo to start signing 28 day leases with hundreds of other people? Imagine if dozens of good citizens showed up to the apartment at once, with a key, any time they wanted. They could just hang out and of course they also had a lease and a legal right to be there, so the original two couldn't do much, could they? That would make it muc…

That would be illegal in any jurisdiction I know of. I'm renting my current apartment; obviously my landlord cannot rent it out to someone else while I still live here. Now you might say: but what if you're living there illegally? Well, I'm not, say I! Now we have a civil disagreement over property and a contract, which is a matter for the courts to decide. If the landlord alleges I no longer have a right to use of this property, despite possessing it in fact (e.g. because I am weeks or months late with my rent, or the rental has otherwise been legally terminated), they can get an order that I be evicted, which the police would enforce. There will be some kind of process, where I would have a chance to reply, for example by giving evidence that actually I paid my rent on July 1, and the landlord is mistaken in his allegations. If I lose and am evicted, then after that, the landlord can re-rent the apartment. But before that, they cannot.

Re: Notorious Airbnb squatter may be the dev behind two flailing Kickstarter games

#39

Post by gcarre »

TheMagicHorsey wrote: post #30

What we must have is a network that enables a peer-to-peer trust rating for individuals. Sort of like Yelp, but for people. No doubt such a system would be a huge privacy problem for people as people would say that negative reviews reveal their private facts, or that those reviews are defamation. However, if the network is decentralized, then it might be possible to keep it running even in the face of opposition from…

something like the Stasi files? http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/stasi-files-revi...

Re: Notorious Airbnb squatter may be the dev behind two flailing Kickstarter games

#40

Post by aikah »

TheMagicHorsey wrote: post #30

What we must have is a network that enables a peer-to-peer trust rating for individuals. Sort of like Yelp, but for people. No doubt such a system would be a huge privacy problem for people as people would say that negative reviews reveal their private facts, or that those reviews are defamation. However, if the network is decentralized, then it might be possible to keep it running even in the face of opposition from…

> Rascals and scammers like these failed Kickstarter bros would be shut down after a single scam ... they would not be able to rent or scam another person after a single scam.

the guys rans 2 scams on kickstarter. peer-to-peer trust rating networks wont help if a plateform does nothing to prevent scams at first place. that guys shouldnt have been allowed to run a second kickstarter even though he didnt deliver a product in the first one.

Post reply on HN