Now hold on. Their innovation was monetizing couch-surfing, the 'sharing economy' as applied to places to sleep. Perhaps you can point to someone earlier who broke the ground, but the perception of the world at large is that Airbnb did it.

There are plenty of people who wouldn't be violating any rules or laws by being Airbnb hosts. Clearly the service could exist without anyone bypassing laws. You might instead argue that the business model requires laws to be flouted in order to turn a profit, but I don't see how you'd prove it.