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Hotel industry mounts attack on Airbnb with House bill

Steve DelBianco, president of e-commerce trade group NetChoice, which promotes free speech on the internet, called Section 230 “the greatest internet law that no one’s ever heard of.” He said issues with short-term rentals should be addressed at the local level.
“Congress should not get involved with how the city of Austin, Texas, enforces its lodging and local zoning laws against property owners,”
DelBianco said.
“But Congress is being pulled into this competitive conflict because Section 230 is a federal law and bars local governments from imposing liability on a platform for commerce and communication that came from users.”
Carl Szabo, NetChoice’s general counsel, argued that Case’s bill would encourage platforms to be less responsive to take down content of bad actors, which is a component of Section 230 and could lead to platforms not doing any moderation at all, similar to how 8chan operates.
“This bill would create disincentives for short term rental platforms to engage in active, aggressive, monitoring of homeowners,”
he said. Like others in the short-term rental lobby, DelBianco said NetChoice plans to educate lawmakers
“on the general hazards of punching holes in Section 230.”