MonkeyParking, one of two apps that made the Internet get all shouty last week, is “temporarily disabled” in San Francisco following a cease-and-desist letter from the city.
In case you missed all the hubbub, MonkeyParking allowed drivers to make money when leaving a parking spot by selling the spot to another driver. Turns out the City of San Francisco, with its already absolutely awful parking problems, wasn’t too happy about this idea. Neither were we.
While the app’s owner originally said he had no intentions to halt operations despite the legal order, plans like that tend to change when you’re staring down the barrel of a massive lawsuit.
The city’s C&D gave MonkeyParking until July 11th (that’s tomorrow, at the time of publishing) to close up shop. After that, SF’s attorneys would come looking for $2,500 per violation of California’s Unfair Competition law.
MonkeyParking says they’ll be back, but only after they’ve figured out how “to clarify [their] value proposition and avoid any future misunderstandings”, and how to exist “within the intent and letter of the law and in full cooperation with the local authorities.”