France continues charge against Silicon Valley

The City of Paris has joined the overarching French battle against Silicon Valley, suing Airbnb for publishing 1,000 illegal rentals adverts.

Over the last couple of weeks, France has become increasingly irked with Silicon Valley. This quest is not from the French government alone, but the anti-internet sentiment seems to be spreading throughout the country.

Here, the City of Paris has lodged its complaints against online marketplace and hospitality firm Airbnb, suggesting the website is illegally advertising properties. According to Reuters, home owners are allowed to rent out their properties for 120 days a year, but the home owner must be registered to ensure compliance.

Several countries around the world have expressed concerns over the impact of Airbnb on local markets, suggesting locals are suffering as profiteers increase housing prices while the traditional hospitality industry is being cripple, but this seems to be one of the first and most aggressive complaints. Paris is suing Airbnb for missing registration details on more than 1,000 adverts. With new national legislation in 2018 provisioning €12,500 per illegal posting, the fine could certainly go north very quickly.

“The goal is to send a shot across the bows to get it over with unauthorized rentals that spoil some Parisian neighbourhoods,” said Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo.

While this might be a headache for Airbnb, this is just one example of France taking a more aggressive stance against Silicon Valley. Aside from this case, the French tax administration recently managed to get Apple to pay €500 million in back-taxes, data protection regulator CNIL has fined Google for GDPR violations, the country is also attempting to rollout ‘right to be forgotten rules’ worldwide and the French government is pressing ahead with plans to hold internet companies accountable to fair and reasonable tax rates.

The final one is perhaps one of the most interesting cases as it demonstrates a break from Europe. The tax strategies of the internet giants have now become infamous, though Europe wanted to tackle these regulatory oversights as a bloc. With the 28 members states not being able to come to any form of agreement, it had seemed the Silicon Valley lobbyists had won, but France was not done, deciding to go alone with its own 3% sales tax on revenues derived within its borders; the internet giants might be able to hide profits, but they haven’t found a good way to hide IP addresses yet.

While the world is certainly turning against the internet players, thanks mainly to data breaches and privacy scandals over the last 18 months, few countries are taking such an aggressive stance as the French. Considering how friendly some nations are to the internet players (see Ireland and Luxembourg) we can’t see this trend spreading everywhere across the European Union, but it will be interesting to see how many member states are buoyed on by the French foray.