San Francisco, Airbnb settle lawsuit over new short-term rental law

(credit: Open Grid Scheduler / flickr)

The City and County of San Francisco have settled a lawsuit filed by Airbnb, which had sued over the city's new short-term rental registration law.

As Ars has reported before, the new law expands upon a previous ordinance that Airbnb itself helped initially draft. The earlier law went into effect in February 2015. The law defined and began to regulate short-term rentals, and it required rentals to have registration numbers. The additional legislation, set to take effect in late July 2016, now requires that listings on sites like Airbnb clearly publish this new registration number and holds both the host and the "platform" (Airbnb) potentially civilly and criminally liable for non-compliance.

Airbnb did not like how it potentially could be in legal trouble for the actions of its users, and so the company sued nearly a year ago.

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