[psaintla]

There should be some limitations in place but how would you enforce them? If your local government checks Airbnb regularly to find people breaking the law then people will just use some other method to do the same thing as Airbnb.

[EwanToo]

If I was the person in charge of enforcing it, I would probably do something like:

  1 - Make it illegal for Airbnb style services to operate in that area, including making a website available, advertising the service, taking listings in that region, etc
  2 - Threaten to jail or heavily fine senior employees if law broken
  3 - Offer a legal route which involves an audit trail of bookings being supplied to the local gov
  4 - Use audit trail to deal with rule-breaking landlords

Steps 1 and 2 are essentially how the US government deals with foreign gambling websites.

[psaintla]

That's a lot to ask from a local government.

[EwanToo]

For New York state government (or equivalent) though?

[Brakenshire]

If the customer is able to find the listing, enforcement agencies certainly should be able to.