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Software Government

Sean Parker Builds Beach-Access App To Atone For His Rule-Violating Wedding (wral.com) 73

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.

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Sean Parker Builds Beach-Access App To Atone For His Rule-Violating Wedding

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  • by Rosco P. Coltrane ( 209368 ) on Sunday December 16, 2018 @07:21AM (#57811870)

    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...

    • by Anonymous Coward

      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.

  • 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!

    • Nevermind. I had him confused with the idiot who was suing to keep people off his "private" beach. Wrong guy, but eat the rich anyway!

  • by GuB-42 ( 2483988 ) on Sunday December 16, 2018 @09:03AM (#57812090)

    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.

    • They already freely break the rules without us "allowing" them to do it. Why did you ever get the idea in your head that they need beg us for our permission?
    • Re: (Score:2, Troll)

      Christ. This is one of the top moronic posts I have ever read here. And that says a lot.
    • False dichotomy (Score:5, Informative)

      by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Sunday December 16, 2018 @10:09AM (#57812264)
      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.
      • Oh, one more thing (Score:4, Insightful)

        by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Sunday December 16, 2018 @12:29PM (#57812766)
        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....
      • by tepples ( 727027 )

        You're confusing equality of opportunity with equality of outcome.

        Careful. A lot of people who make accusations like this ignore unequal opportunity that is caused by heritability of socioeconomic status. In other words, poor parents are more likely to have poor children.

        • 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
    • Post-hoc justification - it's called corruption.

    • I believe that everyone should follow the same rules, there should just be less rules overall.
    • 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.

      It represents a theft from The People, so no, don't let them do it. The land is available to the commoner; where access exists, it is illegal to close it off, and there's really no beach worthy of the name which you can't get to on foot.

      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.

      All the beaches which everyone can easily get to in the USA are open to access by all, but they are not typically the locations of catastrophic events.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward


      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.

      This is not simply an unpopular opinion, it's an attack on democracy itself. You're harkening back to a day when some people were above the law. We tried this before, more than 200 years ago when the world was run by monarchy, and the rich WERE above the law. the rule of law [wikipedia.org] says nobody is above the law.

      I certainly don't want to go back to a monarchy, and a

    • by eriks ( 31863 )

      Hard to tell if you're trolling, but I'll bite.

      The only thing that having a lot of money should get you is, well, a lot of money, ya know, to buy stuff with. It shouldn't give you more political power, or "get out of jail free" cards, or the ability to write your own laws, or break them with impunity. The fact that it more-or-less already *does* give you those things, is pretty much the primary problem our civilization currently faces; e.g. money == speech.

      We have quite a few laws that don't make any sens

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • by DNS-and-BIND ( 461968 ) on Sunday December 16, 2018 @09:19AM (#57812122) Homepage
    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.
  • 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.

  • by Pinky's Brain ( 1158667 ) on Sunday December 16, 2018 @11:38AM (#57812568)

    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 ...

  • More people use Android, but iPhone is the choice of the entitled pricks of the world.

  • 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.

  • ...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!

Keep up the good work! But please don't ask me to help.

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