U.S. court strikes down FAA’s hobby drone registration rule
sfgate.com
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It may or may not be a good idea for the legislature to change those laws so that the FCC (or another agency) can regulate hobby drones and model aircraft, but unless and until that happens this is dead in the water.
Had the FCC been the agency involved, I'd agree that this would be a clear and obvious violation.
The FAA is free to (and does) make their own additional regulations concerning mobile phone use on aircraft.
Because all of that would be outside the scope of the statutes? Precisely. So is the regulation of mobile phone use while in flight.
Please cite the relevant law; few of us here are experts on the matter, and it's far from being clear that forcing people to register is a violation of anything.
I'd have to register an aircraft if I wanted to fly it in most cases, and I'd have to register myself (get a pilot's license) - so it is not clear that FAA's authority ends when the aircraft is small and its pilot is on the ground.
There are entire classes of aircraft (ultra-lights most prominently) that require no license or registration to fly.
The relevant law here comes from The FAA Modernization and Reform Act of 2012, which prevented the FAA from imposing any new regulations on model aircrafts. The FAA classifies drones as model aircrafts, ergo they can't make you register them.
The 2015 rule requiring registration was clear overreach by the FAA, made even more ridiculous because it was labeled an "emergency action"
The question is, what is a "drone"? A drone is synonymous with UAS, and unmanned aircraft system, to the FAA. Clearly, UAS the size of Predator are not "model aircraft".
Are the drones above 0.5KG still classified as model aircraft? What's to stop FAA to re-classify any UAS as NOT model aircraft?
MODEL AIRCRAFT DEFINED.—In this section, the term ‘‘model aircraft’’ means an unmanned aircraft that is— (1) capable of sustained flight in the atmosphere; (2) flown within visual line of sight of the person operating the aircraft; and (3) flown for hobby or recreational purposes.
... and lest anyone think there is any wiggle room in defining an unmanned aircraft - from a few pages earlier:
UNMANNED AIRCRAFT.—The term ‘‘unmanned aircraft’’ means an aircraft that is operated without the possibility of direct human intervention from within or on the aircraft.
Your typo has confused the hell out of people here, you might want to replace it with FAA unless you really did mean FCC :)
And what happens to the registration database?
Do you know what their basis was for 400ft ceiling was?
One less thing to worry about being a "criminal" regarding.
Thanks Donald. Less regulation is sometimes better.
On the off chance it was not satire. Trump had noting to do with this. It was struck down by a court, by a judge appointed long before Trump was President, in response to a lawsuit filed long before Trump was President, using as justification a law that was signed by Obama.
The Navy has microwave laser weapons and similar which might be useful, it'd be a bit pricey, but a drop in the bucket of any major airport. And unlike registration, that actually solves (some) of the problem.
I think we should stop thinking about drones as something new. For instance, in the context of airport safety, rogue drones are simply flying nuisance objects. Do airports have to deal with these on a daily basis? Yes! The airports have to deal with birds!
What do they do with birds? They trap them, shoot them, and often kill them (e.g. see http://www.theecologist.org/News/news_analysis/2520695/airpo...) Arguably, if they have this right regarding wild geese, they should have the same right regarding drones (even more so: "killing" a drone does not pose a threat to the environment).
So, to answer your question: people who hunt down birds around the airports will also hunt down drones, if given the right.
Why should they have that right?
Certainly they should do so over their own property, but if they want to extend that zone for commercial purposes ( i.e. permitting unhindered approach of aircraft so as to charge landing fees ) then the airport authorities should be required to buy land under the approaches, rather than just being able to declare a free-fire zone over other people's property.
Yes, I believe this was the implication.
>What problems would that solve?
Giving the right to shoot down drones, in limited circumstances, to property owners would solve the following problems:
1. Prevent using a drone in violation of property, privacy and other laws;
2. Provide a negative incentive to potential violators.
Basically, same motivation and reasoning as self-defense laws.
The drones to be shut down would be drones violating the law.
Rephrasing your question in application to self-defense laws: "Am I implying it would be a good policy to start shooting people?" - the many existing self-defense laws say yes.
Also when it comes to self-defense laws, most states require the shooter to genuinely believe he/she is in mortal danger before shooting. Sure some states have stand your ground laws that allow more, but I would not say it's so clear-cut that people can just start shooting other people or property when they believe their rights are being violated.
It's not the people's decision as to whether a drone is violating the law. If you were arguing having the government have that right or responsibility that's a lot different. But even so shooting down aircraft is not something that should be done likely. There's a reason the FAA makes it completely illegal. Shooting a drone for flying over your property could make it go out of control and injure others.
There's one other circumstance, imminent mortal or serious violent threat to others.
My bad, I meant re-stating your question if drones were replaced with people.
>Also when it comes to self-defense laws, most states require the shooter to genuinely believe he/she is in mortal danger before shooting.
That's why I said "limited circumstances". It would be wrong to allow to shoot down drones willy-nilly, but certain circumstances should allow it.
>It's not the people's decision as to whether a drone is violating the law.
Well, same reasoning can be applied to take down all self-defense laws.
>Shooting a drone for flying over your property could make it go out of control and injure others.
In which case you should be liable for damages.
Certainly a lot better than just throwing up your hands and waiting for an A380 to go down because somebody had a bug in their flight controller.
We need a way to enforce any proposed drone regulation, so that when a stupid teenager drops a malfunctioning drone on your head from 300ft, you are not left wondering why they didn't register.
That is, the registration is not helpful, and so should not be implemented in the form proposed by the FAA.
Your laws won't protect a stupid teenager from dropping a malfunctioning drone on your head.
Unless you meant technical enforcement, which that less stupid teenager can hack?
It's a general principle that laws that can't be enforced should not be introduced.
On the other thing, we definitely do want to prevent certain bad things (malicious or accidentally wrongful) use of drones from happening. We do need to have a legal framework which would allow us to reduce the rate of such incidents - both by active intervention and by providing negative incentives to the wrongdoers.
Registration does not accomplish this, nor would any law of the form "this is not allowed".
As for technical enforcement - possibly yes, if it prevents a large percentage of undesired incidents. For instance, requiring GPS-enabled drones to avoid airports could alleviate a lot of concerns, and won't be harmful to the law-abiding consumer.
Sounds like the type of vague technological requirements mixed with ever expanding job scope the defense industry adores. Lets get this pushed through congress!
Think of the children.
Any drone flying in a city or near an airport without a flight plan is a nuisance, and it's chased down by city or airport-owned security drones, captured, and confiscated.
(This pre-supposes a certain degree of technical sophistication on the part of the FAA. If they don't have the ability to build this, probably some vendor or drone manufacturer will and then operate it on behalf of the FAA as a third party.)
I anticipate a lot of arguments in coming years between land owners and drone operators about exactly where the drone right-of-ways ought to be and whether drone operators ought to pay land owners to fly over their property...
There's also nothing in your system (as stated) that will actually enforce the drones to do that. Even assuming you outlaw all the other drones, what's going to stop a criminal with a rogue/modified drone? Such a system will only harm law-abiding people.
>I anticipate a lot of arguments in coming years between land owners and drone operators about exactly where the drone right-of-ways ought to be and whether drone operators ought to pay land owners to fly over their property...
We have already solved this problem when aircraft were invented.
Laws won't stop people from flying drones where they shouldn't, but if caught they could be confiscated or the operators fined. If nuisance drones are a problem, we'll need "police drones" to chase them down and disable them. Sort of like how FCC regulations can't stop me from broadcasting a radio station on a frequency I'm not allowed to transmit on if I'm really determined to do it, but they can locate me, fine me, and generally give me strong incentives not to do it again.
My quadcopters don't even have GPS, for instance.