Isn't that a tough question? There's no way we'll ever answer it, especially on a web discussion board.
It's an important question though, mainly because it comes up every time people have a passionate, and perhaps legitimate, disagreement about what the law ought to be.
High school debates aside, I think almost everyone agrees that civil disobedience is sometimes completely justified. People also almost universally agree that breaking every law you don't like, simply because you don't think it should be the law, would not be justified.
So, where do regulations on short term rentals fit in?
My initial reaction is that this is an easy one. I don't think that regulations on converting a house to a hotel get anywhere close to the standard I'd expect for what wikipedia defines as a "active, professed refusal to obey certain laws, demands, and commands of a government, or of an occupying international power. Civil disobedience is a symbolic or ritualistic violation of the law, rather than a rejection of the system as a whole"…
That said, I would give the nod to people who would seek to violate some types of zoning regulations. It is certainly possible for zoning regulations (school districts, voting districts, and so forth) to reach vile levels of class and race discrimination. A lot of people, for instance, might want to keep a boarding house for migratory workers out of their district - a ban on short term rentals could accomplish this.
In the case of airbnb, I would see that as a bit of manipulation, though - in general, what I'm seeing is housing that used to be occupied by long term residents, especially children who cost a lot of money and don't pay rent, getting evicted and turned into a fun crash pad for tourists who would like to spend a while in the wine country or the left bank of Paris. I personally think that short term rentals are a real threat to neighborhoods like the french quarter in New Orleans, large sections of San Francisco, and, sure, Berlin.
In short, while I leave the door slightly open for meaningful civil disobedience to excessively restrictive zoning laws that curtail short term rentals, I don't see many of the current measures as coming anywhere close to the standard for civil disobedience.
You'll never get an airtight argument as solid as a mathematical proof on this, though. It just isn't like that.
It's an important question though, mainly because it comes up every time people have a passionate, and perhaps legitimate, disagreement about what the law ought to be.
High school debates aside, I think almost everyone agrees that civil disobedience is sometimes completely justified. People also almost universally agree that breaking every law you don't like, simply because you don't think it should be the law, would not be justified.
So, where do regulations on short term rentals fit in?
My initial reaction is that this is an easy one. I don't think that regulations on converting a house to a hotel get anywhere close to the standard I'd expect for what wikipedia defines as a "active, professed refusal to obey certain laws, demands, and commands of a government, or of an occupying international power. Civil disobedience is a symbolic or ritualistic violation of the law, rather than a rejection of the system as a whole"…
That said, I would give the nod to people who would seek to violate some types of zoning regulations. It is certainly possible for zoning regulations (school districts, voting districts, and so forth) to reach vile levels of class and race discrimination. A lot of people, for instance, might want to keep a boarding house for migratory workers out of their district - a ban on short term rentals could accomplish this.
In the case of airbnb, I would see that as a bit of manipulation, though - in general, what I'm seeing is housing that used to be occupied by long term residents, especially children who cost a lot of money and don't pay rent, getting evicted and turned into a fun crash pad for tourists who would like to spend a while in the wine country or the left bank of Paris. I personally think that short term rentals are a real threat to neighborhoods like the french quarter in New Orleans, large sections of San Francisco, and, sure, Berlin.
In short, while I leave the door slightly open for meaningful civil disobedience to excessively restrictive zoning laws that curtail short term rentals, I don't see many of the current measures as coming anywhere close to the standard for civil disobedience.
You'll never get an airtight argument as solid as a mathematical proof on this, though. It just isn't like that.