I love AirBnb. I use it all the time.<p>But, I understand the laws in big cities. Let's say you rent an apartment in a building, which virtually anyone in NYC is doing. Would you want random people having access to your building? Random people getting a copy of the keys? It's your home, and your neighbor is treating the space like a hotel. You'll have random people all over who don't necessarily respect your space.<p>Additionally, it raises rates for apartments. $150/night is nothing for a nice AirBnb place, but it makes for some pretty expensive rent.
This is great for airbnb but based on my (admittedly limited) understanding of this specific case from their blogs on it, this case wasn't particularly representative of the normal use case or the normal problems that can come up when subletting through airbnb.<p>From the blog posts it seems as if the guy's landlord was on-board with him subletting, which is a different situation than many I hear about where the landlord has no idea (and may in fact be the one going after the renter if he or she finds out). Also it seems the guy was present and only renting out a room during the guest's stay which allowed him to get off on a technicality in this case while many Airbnb renters will rent the entire space during vacation times, etc.