>Do you seriously think it's the responsibility of the service provider to make sure its users don't engage in any potentially illegal activities?
If the illegal activity is "using their system as it was intended" then they have a degree of responsibility, yes.
They should at the very least provide a warning to users in quebec that they need to pay the $250 or they will be in violation of the law by using the airbnb website.
This does not seem like a particularly onerous thing to implement (10 lines of code?), either, and any judge reviewing a case against them would likely bear this in mind.
If they were small and did not have many hosts in quebec I doubt it would be an issue. They are clearly not any more, however.
>10 lines of code for every city, county, state, etc? And keeping it up to date will be easy too right?
For every city, country and state that has special rules about renting, yes. If they really don't want to participate in a particular market, they can let their competitors serve it instead.
If the illegal activity is "using their system as it was intended" then they have a degree of responsibility, yes.
They should at the very least provide a warning to users in quebec that they need to pay the $250 or they will be in violation of the law by using the airbnb website.
This does not seem like a particularly onerous thing to implement (10 lines of code?), either, and any judge reviewing a case against them would likely bear this in mind.
If they were small and did not have many hosts in quebec I doubt it would be an issue. They are clearly not any more, however.