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While out of context, and I in no mean comment on the mertis of the piece.

>Response: There is nothing unusual about the word “assist” in the law. Laws against assisting people in skirting rules and regulations are very common, for instance, in copyright and patent law.

Using the two of the most hated laws in hacker community as positive example is hardly a shortcut to make said community endorse the legislation.

I would like to think that anyone who identifies as a hacker would be smart enough to realize that being opposed to current patent/copyright law does not mean you should be opposed to every legal concept used or referenced in patent/copyright law. That's like refusing to eat ketchup because you object to McDonald's.
The concept of «assisting copyright infringement» is not popular among those who identify as hacker. So in current context your argument is moot.

Of course, «correct representation of authorship under the authors' choice of names and pseudonyms» is a concept used in copyright law with a better reputation, in that case your argument would fully apply, of course.

-> Having 75 days to rent your home is a perfectly reasonable restriction.

Just out of curiosity, and because I can't find the answer, what is the number 75 based on? Is there something in the data about that number, wherein those who rent out up to and including 75 days are the "reasonable" people just renting out their place while they're gone on a long holiday? 75 just seems sort of random and arbitrary, to me at least. Is that the threshold for when people renting out their place become the "long-termers"?

Edit: Third party and not from Airbnb, but this place seems to aggregate some data. Gonna go play now. http://insideairbnb.com/get-the-data.html

What is your non-arbitrary take on that number then?
I mean, it's effectively 2.5 months. Without knowing more about some of the laws governing rentals in SF it's tough to speculate. I was merely curious if that number was informed by customer behavior.
The current law is 90 days, so it's probably as simple as "the initiative's authors wanted to shorten it a little but not too much".
Its like this site didn't exist until a few minutes ago when it was posted here and on reddit. (https://www.reddit.com/r/sanfrancisco/comments/3n2lxn/i_have...).

- there are almost no search results for this blog on google - there is no way to identify the author - no linkedin - no twitter - no facebook - there is only one other blog post and it isn't linked to anywhere on the net - its easy to backdate a post.

The post now has a name, Zach Perez and from the bio, I'm guessing this is him: https://www.linkedin.com/pub/zach-perez/b6/37b/a6a

The person in the LI profile has no discernible ties to San Francisco. Since his only other blog post is virtually the same thing, it's possible he's acting as a consultant or shill for pro-Prop F team in some capacity. I take his claims with a grain of salt.

Also the person who posted on Reddit has a unique profile of posting almost entirely anti-development, anti-tech posts in his/her recent history.

It's doubtful they're the same person, but conceivable (even believable) this is a concerted campaign disguised as organic conversation.

I think virtually any blog post authored by an unknown person with little real social history is suspect in this campaign and should be ignored as propaganda.

Property owners already have the power to disallow short term rentals in their units, and won't need this law.

We already know this is funded/supported by Hotels, which are no doubt resenting lost income. The other beneficiaries are people who resent that what their neighbors are doing is legal.

We don't need housing in the Bay Area to be more scarce, and reducing property owner's rights in order to do it is even worse.

23 points in 49 minutes and it's buried at #44 in the middle of the second page. Meanwhile a post with 21 points in 4 hours is at #12 on the first page

Great case study of how like Hacker News' "objective" voting system hides posts with unpopular views.