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Sean Parker Builds Beach-Access App To Atone For His Rule-Violating Wedding (wral.com)
An anonymous reader quotes the Associated Press:
A tech billionaire whose elaborate wedding in a redwood grove violated California rules has helped create a smartphone app that shows users a map of more than 1,500 spots where people can get to the coastline. The California Coastal Commission unveiled the YourCoast app at its meeting Thursday in Newport Beach. "This is an only in California story," Commission Chair Dayna Bochco said in a statement. "Where else could you find a tech mogul partnering with a regulator to help the public get to the beach?"
Sean Parker, co-founder of file-sharing service Napster, agreed to help make the educational tool after he built a large site resembling a movie set for his wedding in an ecologically sensitive area of Big Sur without proper permits. However, the commission determined the construction in a campground area wouldn't harm the environment and the wedding was allowed to proceed. Parker, a former president of Facebook, also paid $2.5 million in penalties, which helped fund hiking trails, field trips and other efforts to increase public access to the popular tourist area. It was a rare high-profile coastal violation case resolved with cooperation rather than a legal fight.
Sean Parker, co-founder of file-sharing service Napster, agreed to help make the educational tool after he built a large site resembling a movie set for his wedding in an ecologically sensitive area of Big Sur without proper permits. However, the commission determined the construction in a campground area wouldn't harm the environment and the wedding was allowed to proceed. Parker, a former president of Facebook, also paid $2.5 million in penalties, which helped fund hiking trails, field trips and other efforts to increase public access to the popular tourist area. It was a rare high-profile coastal violation case resolved with cooperation rather than a legal fight.
Why do you have to put this same information TWIÇE in the same week here???
So dude makes atones for having his big event on top of an environmentally sensitive area by rolling out changes and new features to make it easier for even more people to tromp in and "take advantage of" said environmentally sensitive area. To me it sounds like a new and greater way to increase harm while paying off critics.
and why is he so important I should care about his wedding?
If you ain't rich and you you can't fund the devlopment of an oops-sorry app, you don't get to have a nice wedding in a protected nature reserve. If you are, you do.
Somehow that story doesn't make me feel all warm and fuzzy...
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
Think again. It's about keeping the poor away from his little section of beach that he wants to keep all to himself.
Eat the rich!
Just further proof that the rich do as they please while anyone else would have been placed in a jail cell and fined a ton of money relative to their income.
Yeah exactly
"in an ungood way"
It seems that underlying that case there was insufficient management by the California government.
The real story is how the oligarch in California was ever allowed to close beaches to the public in the first place.
Quotes from the story show insufficient CA government management:
"However, the commission determined the construction in a campground area wouldn't harm the environment and the wedding was allowed to proceed."
"Parker made the deal with commissioners just a week before his June 2013 wedding to artist Alexandra Lenas in the woods on a hotel property."
"The site is supposed to be an affordable campground for the public that can't be closed for private events without permission from regulators. Officials found that the owners [my emphasis] failed to get permission for the wedding and had illegally closed the area to the public for six years."
"Even though the property owner was at fault for the violations [my emphasis], Parker accepted responsibility."
It's the new Guilded Age; except that we don't have the wage and economic growth of that time.
While people are struggling to pay for healthcare and student loans, we have this dot.com lottery winner cutting off access to public parks because he's got the money.
People want to make America Great Again? Like the 1950s? OK!
Let's bring back Eisenhower era tax rates again - adjusted for inflation, obviously. There were plenty of opportunities for average people back then.
It may be an unpopular opinion but I think that allowing the rich to break some rules in exchange for making things better for others is a good thing.
The whole point of being rich is to be able to do things you and I can't do. And reserving a spot of nature that is not available to the commoner in a way that doesn't damage it won't hurt anyone, so let them do it. In exchange they give us something good. Win/win: they have their little eccentricity, I have my beach access app.
Pure equality is not a good thing, some resources are limited. Letting no one access them would be a waste, and letting everyone access them would be a catastrophe. So let the rich have them, and in exchange, make the more common resources more accessible for everyone else.
Napster. What did you expect? People like that need to be set back to a "fresh" start and be told to play by the rules this time, not be fined 0.1% of their money and lauded in the media.
You break the law, you are heavily penalized. He breaks the law, he gets a sweetheart deal from the government, spends some chump change and laughs about it. We really are bifurcating into an aristocracy and commoners situation in America. And the aristocracy doesn't see any reason why they should be subject to the same laws as us deplorables.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
We don't need to give them special power in exchange for nice things, we're already giving them vast amounts of money in exchange for those nice things.
Pure equality does have it's place: in the law. If they law doesn't apply equally then it's not the law. You're confusing equality of opportunity with equality of outcome.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Post-hoc justification - it's called corruption.
How is it that California allows people who own a patch of land adjacent to the ocean to restrict access to the Pacific Ocean? And to prohibit access to the beach between their property and the ocean? The ocean does not belong to these rich people, and the rest of us should not be blocked from accessing it just because they want to lock strangers out of their little world.
What to dislike more, heavy handed environ-"mental" regulations (how can a temporary set cause 2.5 million damage to a beach?) or a CEO of a selfish enterprise of distributing other peoples' works without compensating them?
This went just as planned, he rented a Redwood forest for 2.5 Million dollar. The politicians who let him get away with it are corrupt pieces of shit, the media which pretends this isn't a giant corrupt mess are also pieces of shit. This whole thing stinks to high heaven.
If I had a small marriage in nature park do I get away with paying a couple thousands dollar to the cop and just continue the wedding? Of course fucking not. Blow off the marriage location, clean it up on his dime and throw the book at him. Letting him get away with this is fucking insane.
Billionaire justice ...
this is literally an app to help working class folks find beaches they could go to because by a rich guy who denied them access to said beaches...
It's a bit like having a fracking magnate list of all the places where it's safe to drink the water provided. Sure, it's nice to have and it's nice the fracker feels guilty for making your water flammable, but it'd be even nicer if the water wasn't made flammable in the first place....
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
nt
> paid $2.5 million in penalties, which helped fund hiking trails, field trips and other efforts to increase public access to the popular tourist area
Meanwhile what did the poor fucktards of california done? NOTHING. This is why rich people should be given thanks to not questioned and attacked like liberals do on the Slashdot.Org biased site.
More people use Android, but iPhone is the choice of the entitled pricks of the world.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Pretty worthless to me since it's an iPhone only app. Kind of elitist to to pick only the most expensive phone company.
There's the notion, planted in our heads by a right wing propaganda machine, that opportunity should be the goal. e.g. that it's wrong to focus on outcomes at all. It's used as a round about attack on social programs. It's part of the broader "bootstrap" narrative that encourages folks who don't have financial security to accept their lot in life.
There's a third option between equal opportunity and equal outcome the right wing doesn't want anyone talking about: everybody gets a decent life. Maybe not an extraordinary life, but a decent one. Food, shelter, healthcare, education, transportation and a modicum of leisure. The idea is nobody is left behind. In the 50s, 60s and 70s we looked forward to those days. Up until the 80s when the powers that be bared their fangs at the working class who up until then was well on their way to that goal.
Remember, past a certain amount of money it's not money anymore, it's power. Or put another way, you can't have the rich without the poor. And finally put another, sillier way, the stripper at your local joint isn't hanging around for your winning personality. Money talks, but it's a lot louder for people who don't have enough of it to get by.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
I never suggested eugenics was necessary. A universal baseline income should be enough to help poor children escape their parents' deep poverty, attend trade school, and relocate for a respectable career. Job creators would benefit by having a larger skilled labor pool.
Of course only our more well to do iPhone sisters and brothers can utilize the info and get to the shore. Let us Android One people eat cake.
'nuff said.
For “it’s easier to beg for forgiveness than to ask for permission”.
Really, I’m just hating because I wish I could be a giant douchebag and have a shitload of money for being in the right place at the right time.
If this guy is truly a virtuous person he will follow this up with something else purely benevolent.
Anyone can pay penance once they're caught.
...for money that is paid to 'forget' about crimes, so please don't label this stuff as 'partnerships'! Some groups would have been tased if they had attempted the same thing!
But I agree with the sentimentality.
Hey look, criminals be criminalling, whether they were once folk heroes or not. Some people get more overt in their selfishness, some learn to mask it under better PR. It all is the same in the end.
I agree with others about needing to legally bring both the person and any government officials who let them get off with a fine, to justice, however.