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Nasir and Matt kick things off by discussing the Airbnb squatter who refuses to leave the condo he rented. They then answer the question, "Can my website be sued for publishing public records?" Update: apparently the Airbnb squatter may haveraised some $40,000 on crowdfunding platform Kickstarter for a video game that never materialized, leaving scores of angry donors in their wake. Full Podcast Transcript NASIR: Welcome to Legally Sound Smart Business. This is Nasir Pasha. MATT: And this is Matt Staub. NASIR: And welcome to the business podcast where we cover business in the news and answer some of your business legal questions that you, the listener, can submit to ask@legallysoundsmartbusiness.com and, if it’s a really short question, as Matt pointed out last week, you can send to your Twitter account @askbizlaw. MATT: I think the question we have for this episode is definitely short enough. It wasn’t sent through Twitter but it would work so we might just write it in Twitter just so it’s in there but, yeah, it’s always good. It’s hard to write any sentence in under 140 characters but it’s doable. NASIR: That’s why I don’t even do it. I just keep writing and it gets cut off. MATT: It’s a challenge. Sometimes, when I’m trying to write a tweet, it gets pretty difficult. You have to abbreviate things, cut words out. NASIR: It’s a whole mess – that whole concept. MATT: All right. Well, we have a pretty interesting story here for this episode and we’ve talked about Airbnb and we’ve talked about it a few times and we talked about it pretty recently, too. We’re not going to talk about – well, we might actually end up talking about their awful logo but we’re going to talk about what happened here in California. For those of you who aren’t familiar with Airbnb, it’s basically a way to rent out space in the spot that you live. It’s kind of like a hotel in that sense but not like a hotel in terms of regulation or that’s arguable. Anyway, this person rented out their condo. She rented out her condo in California and I guess she did it for 30 days. The guy rented it out, 30 days. She’s like, “All right, it’s come to an end.” He basically is saying, “No, I’m not going to leave. At this point, it’s been 30 days. I’m entitled to certain rights in California and I’m just going to sit here until you evict me.” NASIR: Ah. MATT: Pretty awful situation for her. She’s just trying to make some money on the side. Yeah, California. Unfortunately, that’s just kind of the legal procedure and she is going to have to go through some sort of eviction process if she wants to get him out of her condo. NASIR: Yeah, this is a total nightmare or horror story. I really think that this owner had no idea that this would even be a possibility. But what’s more important is that the person that moved in seemed to have every idea that this was going to happen because who would think that, like, okay, they’re staying for a month and you overstay and you know your legal rights that your power is going to get cut off. You’re like, “No, you can’t; if you do, that’s a violation and you have to actually go through the eviction process.” I mean, that’s just terrible. MATT: I call these people backseat lawyers – like there’s backseat drivers. A lot of times, it’s people that think they knows these laws and they’re actually wrong or misinformed. In this case, the guy had done his researched and he knew he could get away with this for I think there’s up to even three months this could drag out. He’s basically going to be staying there. It’s a pretty unfortunate situation for her. Like I said, she has to go through the court process. She has to evict him from her place that she owns just because of the length of the stay that he had there. NASIR: Yeah, and that’s what I’m wondering about – Airbnb’s side. They graciously gave the money back that whatever money that Airbnb collected from the owner, she was able to get some of it back at least – if not all.