The parent is wrong though. It is not the duty of merchants to inform you that s... | Hacker News

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waps on April 7, 2014 | parent | context | favorite | on: S.F. cracks down on Airbnb rentals

The parent is wrong though. It is not the duty of merchants to inform you that something is illegal.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignorantia_juris_non_excusat

In the case of uber you might attempt to make the case that uber is enabling/encouraging/paying people to break the law. That is illegal by itself.

bsder on April 8, 2014 [–]

A good point, but not one I was trying to make.

My point was that if AirBnB did anything which limited itself to operating in legal areas, it would be several orders of magnitude smaller.

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