[tptacek]

The subtext is that they're pushing on and in many cases breaking regulations (on carriage service and short-term tenancy), and also externalizing their costs. I happen to believe that's actually true in both cases, but that doesn't make what they're doing equivalent to building a business on someone else's proprietary IP.

[chimeracoder]

> I happen to believe that's actually true in both cases, but that doesn't make what they're doing equivalent to building a business on someone else's proprietary IP.

Drop the "intellectual" part of "intellectual property" and that's exactly what AirBNB is doing - tenants are literally using property that isn't theirs (they've leased it, but they don't own it)[0] and are making money off it.

And in doing so, they are also impacting others' property rights, since the externalities of short-term tenancy are borne by neighbors, not by the person who lists a whole-apartment rental on AirBNB.

[0] And given how hard the music industry has been pushing the line "you don't own the music you buy; you're only leasing rights to access it" for digital downloads (not just streaming), this isn't really that different a situation.

[tptacek]

I agree, but that part of Airbnb's usage pattern is bound to change, and the service will easily survive that change. Grooveshark, on the other hand, can't survive a correction from proscribed uses.

[whichfawkes]

I'd argue that they make it easier for individuals to exercise rights they should have. They're merely centralized listings that make it easy to connect buyers and sellers of services in transport/lodging markets.

Fundamentally, if I own a property I should be able to allow/disallow access to anyone as I see fit, and charge appropriately. If I make money, I'm still obligated to pay taxes on it (therein, I imagine, lie the problems).

So I'd claim that AirBnB and Uber are helping push for more sane regulations which allow free-er markets, while Grooveshark was basically just short of directly-stealing the content of others to profit on themselves.

That said, I'd still rather have Grooveshark than not, because I personally don't care so much about the record-companies rights - but certainly the government should be there to help uphold the rights of individuals and businesses, which, alas, means legal trouble for Grooveshark.

[tptacek]

If you buy a property in the middle of residential Oak Park, on a sleepy block lined with bungalow houses, do you have the right to open up a bar in it? How about a 24/7 metal machining shop? A noxious waste processing plant?

Where do we draw the line, and why do we draw it there?

It's not an abstract question: the regs that Airbnb pushes on are society's current answer to that question. They're going to change, as I think we can all see, but how far will they change? That's an extremely important and immediately impactful question right now.

Meanwhile, bringing this back around to Grooveshark: copyright is unlikely to change in ways that would be meaningful to Grooveshark.

[drewcrawford]

There is a difference between what you are describing (commercial zoning) and what AirBnB does (length of tenancy). Commercial zoning is much more obviously a legitimate government function than length of tenancy, which is a textbook economic rigidity.

But to answer your question seriously, I think the Japanese have a better zoning system than in the US, theirs allows for, in limited quantities, a bar in a residential neighborhood, or even an apartment next to a machining shop. The insight here is that it does no one any good to have a long commute, and so they have a system that affords landowners choices about the kind of neighbors they want to have, rather than dumping them all into residential-only zones.

[tptacek]

So what you're suggesting is that it should be OK for me to buy a bungalow in the middle of Oak Park and literally open up a hotel in it? That's a coherent argument, but not one I think a lot of people share.

[drewcrawford]

I don't know how to answer your question because I don't know what it means to say something "should be OK".

If you're asking if I would prefer to live in an Oak Park where hotels were legal as opposed to where hotels were illegal, of course. If you're asking me if I would be on board with storming into an established community and rewriting their zoning codes over their objections, probably not, although there may be exceptions. If you're asking me if I would sleep well at night while operating a hotel in Oak Park, then I would probably want to meet the surrounding neighbors and decide for myself how much the activity would disturb them, look at the size of the easement, what the noise floor is like, and so on. If you're asking me if I as a homeowner would be annoyed at a neighboring hotel, it's possible, but I'm annoyed at a lot of things, most of which I seek no special right to change.

Those are four answers to your hypothetical, but I don't know whether one of them, or any of them, are the kind of answer you're looking for.

[tptacek]

Sure. I think I was fixating on "length of tenancy" as an illegitimate focus for zoning regulation (the implication I took from your comment). But we're pretty far from the original topic of the thread now.