Commercial Drones Were Never Actually Illegal, Rules Judge

[Fdzzaigl]

While I understand that having drones fly around everywhere could potentially endanger planes, surely this is only going to be a real issue around airports.

What if one of those drones malfunctions and tumbles down on someone's head / property from 30 meters high?

What if people equip them with cameras to film your every move?

What if burglars let them fly around your house to find the weak spots in your alarm and plan their thievery accordingly?

etc.

It's still very much a grey area imo.

 

[TheSYLOH]

While I understand that having drones fly around everywhere could potentially endanger planes, surely this is only going to be a real issue around airports.

What if one of those drones malfunctions and tumbles down on someone's head / property from 30 meters high?

What if people equip them with cameras to film your every move?

What if burglars let them fly around your house to find the weak spots in your alarm and plan their thievery accordingly?

etc.

It's still very much a grey area imo.

All of which are illegal under separate laws.
Property damage/personal injury, privacy and burglary laws, respectively.

Don't get me wrong, I think the FAA should have SOME regulation on this.
In fact they should have quite alot, since I don't want some guys cheap predator drone knockoff crashing into my living room.
But drones should not be the sole providence of governments.

For example. imagine what a farm could do crop dusting and monitoring growth patterns from a ROV.
And amazon and such, maybe even a pizza delivery company.

Remember cars have reams and reams of regulation surrounding them, why should drones be any different?

 

[Gorrath]

I wonder what's to stop someone with a rifle and good aim to shoot down every delivery drone he sees. It's like theft, delivered right to your backyard.

Hitting a fast flying object with a rifle is exceedingly difficult. Hitting a fast flying object with a rifle flying at around 100yards/meters would make you Annie Oakley. Likely, you would want to use a shotgun for this, since drones are similar in size and speed to ducks. But even then, shot used against fowl is useful out to about 40-50 yards. The chances of anyone getting lucky enough to have their weapon in hand and loaded and catch a drone flying low enough to hit it is absurdly low really.

I'm pretty good with a wide variety of weapons, and while I could hit a drone sized target from 100 yards with ease if it were sitting still or moving slowly, it simply is not practical to think of bringing one down over that distance if it were in full flight. Just my 2 cents.

 

[Li Mu]

While I understand that having drones fly around everywhere could potentially endanger planes, surely this is only going to be a real issue around airports.

What if one of those drones malfunctions and tumbles down on someone's head / property from 30 meters high?

What if people equip them with cameras to film your every move?

What if burglars let them fly around your house to find the weak spots in your alarm and plan their thievery accordingly?

etc.

It's still very much a grey area imo.

I'd say that only your first point could really be valid.
It's easy to film our every move already. Camera phones are proof of this. There's also enough CCTV around that you can be tracked pretty well in large cities. Also, I think burgulars can simply do what they've always done; walk around your house.

I doubt that the safety of the common man or woman is what worries the FAA. More likely that it would make it easier to photograph military bases and such places considered high on the national security list.

 

[KnowYourOnion]

What if one of those drones malfunctions and tumbles down on someone's head / property from 30 meters high?

What if people equip them with cameras to film your every move?

What if burglars let them fly around your house to find the weak spots in your alarm and plan their thievery accordingly?

etc.

It's still very much a grey area imo.

My god... how do you go outside?
How are you not riddled with:
"What if I get into a car accident while driving down the street?"
"What if that dog over there bites me?"
"What if I catch a stray bullet while at the park?"
... and there is absolutely no way you've ever flown on a plane because you could never get past "What if the plane crashes?" mantra that probably runs through your head.
And I'm fairly certain you're pretty anti-gay because there's no chance you can get off the topic of, "IF we let them marry... what if next is farm animals?!"

Meteorites have crashed through people's homes and hit them. It happens. If a drone hits someone... it happens.
Kind of like when a car does. Or a plane crash. Or {insert anything here}.

You're already being filmed 24/7.... never mind that there are cell phones with cameras literally everywhere. But the cities of the world are blanketed with cameras. Plus government satellites.
Soon google glass (and other wearable tech like it) will be everywhere.

As for the burglars.... you're right, prior to aerial drone surveillance no one ever had their home broken into before. lol

Anytime you want me to stop pointing out how utterly stupid your post was, just let me know....

Except all his points are valid, you advocate rushing into a technological revolution with nary a backward glance. The chances of me being hit by a car are thankfully quite small if I follow basic road safety.

One has literally no way of knowing whether a drone's engines will fail and hurtle its way towards your brain because let's be fair drones aren't going to be on a 'road' which one can look both ways on and plan accordingly.

Don't be so dismissive of very real problems with the proliferation of drone technology.

 

[rsacks]

So the judge dismissed the fine due to lack of any actual regulations on the books by the FAA that prohibits drone flights. My question is can the FAA make a regulation regarding flying drones or will it just be struck down as an overreach? Would there be a difference between someone just flying a drone around for the sake of flying a drone and a business using it for a specific purpose? There are a lot of questions about the use of drones and I think that this would be a place where some clarification would be welcome and a little bit of regulation would be good (i.e. size limits and possibly flight paths). If you think gridlock in cities is bad just think about trying to direct traffic in 3 dimensions instead of 2.

 

[lacktheknack]

As much as I want to grin because I dislike people being taken to court over innocent actions, I can't say that "Unregulated Sky Robots" is ever something I want to win points.

You're thinking too 'robot apocalypse' here, man. Try and visualize a more...Jetsons kind of approach.

No one has less faith in a robot apocalypse than me.

I'm thinking more along the lines of "Mafia hits".

 

[Combustion Kevin]

Alright, make airports off-limits to aerial drones, and restrict their height to something reasonable so they don't endanger planes outside the airport either.

If security is their biggest concern, don't outlaw it outright, establish security guidelines and requirements.

 

[FalloutJack]

I'm thinking more along the lines of "Mafia hits".

What? You mean like this?


Well, considering technology lately, this world might end up like Shadowrun.

 

[Flames66]

I'm not interested in having a bunch of flying camera allowed to go where ever they please. I'm all in favor of the things being outlawed.

Oh hey, I just walked down the street. I guess I should be outlawed too.

You realise that these things will just be flying above your houses, not right next to your windows? Not to mention, what's the worst that happens when a drone (which is usually remote flown, not piloted) that for some reason is recording everything it sees flies over you?

It sees a person? It sees a person in a window which other people could already see? It sees you having sex? What, will it stop and film a porno?

Whilst I agree having people stick cameras in your own home and record you 24/7 is a breach of privacy, having drones fly over in PUBLIC where people can already see you and helicopters already do the same thing - what's the problem?

If they just fly over I don't have a problem (as long as they have no downward facing cameras). However, if I saw one hovering over my house for a while I would assume it was up to something nefarious and shoot it down.

 

[tangoprime]

So the judge dismissed the fine due to lack of any actual regulations on the books by the FAA that prohibits drone flights. My question is can the FAA make a regulation regarding flying drones or will it just be struck down as an overreach? Would there be a difference between someone just flying a drone around for the sake of flying a drone and a business using it for a specific purpose?

I have some experience (unfortunate experience) dealing with the FAA on this, so I'll weigh in. The judge came down on the side of the individual, since the FAA had fined someone for a statement violation that wasn't actually a law. The statement was an addendum to quite old rules regarding model aircraft, which basically stated that hobby model aircraft = OK. Hobby aircraft for profit = Illegal UAV (but not actually illegal, it was *pending legislation* that never happened).

Now to my story- I had the bright idea to use the new-at-the-time Draganflyer UAV, an awesome R/C heli platform with rotors in an X configuration, and a secure mount for a number of different cameras. Additionally, it had GPS routing, position/alt hold, and could be controlled using glasses with a cam in it, bad ass. My idea was to use this as a green, and MUCH cheaper alternative to traditional aerial photography for construction projects and real estate. Do you have any idea how much it costs to have the regular necessary progress pictures shot by a photographer in a fixed-wing aircraft for a construction project? And how much fuel is burned? Anyway, I got a loan, bought the (fucking crazy expensive) UAV, got a website together, and started by doing some work for local realtors, as aerial shots of nice, well maintained property looks awesome on a listing. Before even sinking my teeth into a real contract with a construction company, I got hit with a C&D by the FAA. Other people offer this kind of service with regards to wedding/event photo packages, but get away with it saying it's a "bonus" and they're not paying for it. Since my business was built around this, I was targeted and shut down in 2010. My bank wasn't happy. Luckily, I was able to return the UAV (draganflyer's support was awesome on this, they're trying their best to get themselves used by US customers, and were sympathetic. I'll def. buy from them again).

So hearing this made me happy and really goddamn pissed at the same time. I was fucked financially over something that wasn't even a real law, but I didn't have the time or money to fight it out with the federal government in court. I'm glad someone else did. Hopefully this will open things up to me getting back into the business, because it was really a hell of a lot of fun, and profitable.

 

[Flames66]

You're already being filmed 24/7....

No I'm fuckin not.

never mind that there are cell phones with cameras literally everywhere. But the cities of the world are blanketed with cameras. Plus government satellites.
Soon google glass (and other wearable tech like it) will be everywhere.

People are already doing things about this. There are movements all over the world to reduce surveillance camera numbers.

Personally, if I thought someone was filming me without my permission I would slap the camera from their hand. If I could reach or have any useful effect I would do the same with CCTV cameras. "It happens already" is not a reason to let it happen more.

 

[tangoprime]

Of course commercial drones aren't illegal. The Tommy gun wasn't illegal either until legislation was passed regarding private ownership of fully automatic weapons. The legal system is always a dozen years behind the technology curve.

So I expect corporations to take full advantage of the lag until legislation and regulation can catch up.

By all means I'd love them to regulate it and give me some rules to abide by, see my previous post here based on my story. Rather then get rules in place, the FAA just decided to go around throwing out C&Ds or illegally fining businesses who decided to use a novel cutting edge technology to do that was previously very costly.

Also, I'm going to nitpick here, lol. I legally own a tax-stamped fully automatic weapon, illegal they are not, just regulated, just like civilian UAVs beyond a certain threshold should be.

 

[Zombie_Moogle]

What I find the most abhorrent about this whole fiasco is how what is essentially a new application for technological advancement is being quashed/fought by big business.

Robotics is the future and the technology used to program such machines to navigate 3D space automatically is going to have far reaching consequences in other fields such as search and rescue, hazardous mining, and space exploration.

We NEED this technology to "take off", not because of the immediate benefits but because of the tangential benefits that will spawn from it.

Amazon (who started this whole thing) would be considered big business. The Federal Aviation Administration, not so much
It's basically the airports going out there saying "We don't want an uncontrolled airspace filled with drones" and they're trying to nip it in the bud, presumably to lay some groundwork before everyone and their mother sends out a quadrillion of them. Or more likely, to prevent the fist accident by drone.

As much as I love to theorize that there are "evil" companies and organizations out there (apart from EA), the thing is that this could prove to be a pretty big mess if it's not controlled in any way. It doesn't mean that there can't be drones, just that maybe not everyone should be allowed to send them out en masse without a bit of training or regulation. That to me, sounds fair, even if the FFA did go overboard and seems to want to hog the airspace.

While I agree that some measure of "quality control" should be put in place, particularly for commercial use, there are always people, corporations, & various other entities with a vested interest in making sure the way we do things now is the way we do it tomorrow. If we consider the drastic decrease in petrol fuel consumption from using electric drones, as opposed to diesel delivery trucks, one could argue that the disturbingly-politically-connected oil industry could be pulling some strings

I'm mostly just riffin here.

Anyway, good for the guy that beat the rap