Airbnb backs off fight with governments, offers policy suggestions

SAN FRANCISCO, Dec 7 (Reuters) - In a moment of peace-making with regulators, Airbnb on Wednesday released a set of policy suggestions for governments that are considering new laws for home- and apartment-renting.

The document, which comes on the heels of concessions with cities including New York City, offers suggestions for collecting lodging taxes from Airbnb hosts, strategies to allow residents to rent their home without offending neighbors, suggestions on limiting the number of nights a home can be rented and setting up a permitting system.

The document is "a resource for governments to consider as they draft or amend these rules," the company said in blog post. "We want to work with lawmakers to get this right." The report is the latest conciliatory gesture from Airbnb, a San Francisco- based online lodging service that investors value at $30 billion. This week, the company also

PARIS, Dec 8 (AFP) - The first wave of virtual reality cinemas, heralding what their creators claim will be an entertainment revolution, rolls out across the world this month.

The first screening room in France opened Wednesday and several others are promised for Beijing, Shanghai and Los Angeles in the next few weeks.

Like the early days of cinema, virtual reality -- or VR -- is still something of a novelty sideshow.

But not for long, its supporters claim.

"Film as we know it will be dead in the next five to 10 years," said the founder of the world's first VR cinema in Amsterdam.

"It's a whole different way of telling the story. I think it is really what we are moving towards in the entertainment world," Jip Samhoud told AFP.

Elisha Karmitz, who is behind the MK2 screening room in Paris, insisted "that the VR revolution is already happening.

"2016 is year zero of this revolution," he added.

In a glass cube inside a MK2 cinema near France's national library, viewers can choose between HTC Vive, Playstation VR and Oculus Rift headsets, or they can go for "full body immersive" simulators.

For 12 euros ($13) you can feel what it is like to fly like a bird for 20 minutes through a forest of New York skyscrapers in the film "Birdly".

Lying flat on your stomach suspended from the ceiling, you change direction with electronic "wings" placed on your arms, and speed up by flapping them faster.

MK2, which has signed a deal with the acclaimed Chinese film director Jia Zhangke to produce more content, predicts that with the cost of producing VR film fall- agreed to drop a lawsuit against New York City over a new short-term rental law and enforce rental restrictions in the key markets of London and Amsterdam. ing, its time is coming fast.

Keen not to be left behind, Hollywood is also investing in the technology, with a few minutes of the new "Assassin's Creed" film already available in VR. There is also a "Star Wars "-inspired game in which the viewer becomes an X-wing fighter pilot like Luke Skywalker.

Analysts argue that more and more conventional films will be released with spin-off VR sequences.

The string of concessions mark an about-face from the startup's previous strategy of either ignoring regulators or outright defying them. That strategy resulted in an intensifying global battle

US 3D giant IMAX announced earlier this year that it is planning to open six VR locations worldwide in malls and multiplexes, with the first destined for Los Angeles.

Its first British VR centre is due to open in Manchester later this month, with another expected in China.

The VR headsets it will use -created by Swedish company Starbreeze -- give a 210-degree field of vision, nearly twice that with regulators from which Airbnb now appears to be backing down.

Chief Executive Officer Brian Chesky has said that the company was slow to engage with cities on the business model and potential implications to neighborhoods and rental markets. Critics in cities with tight housing markets such as New York and San Francisco say that Airbnb enables landlords to evict people and convert their apartments into short- term rentals, which takes affordable housing off the market and drives up rental prices.

"The vast majority of activity on Airbnb is by ordinary people making median income," Chesky said in an interview with Reuters last month at an Airbnb conference. "I did not anticipate and appreciate there would be so many property management companies and unscrupulous landlords that would list so many properties (on Airbnb) in some cities. That is a problem." offered by Oculus Rift and HTC Vive sets, it claimed.

IMAX is also working with Google to create a cinema-quality VR camera, expected to be ready for commercial use towards the end of next year.

However with VR cinemas in their infancy, it is unclear whether gaming-based formats -- which are already hugely popular in Asia -- will dominate.

As yet all we have to go on is the experience of Samhoud's cin-