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Comment by sneak | Hacker News Reader

As someone who wants hardware that does what I instruct it to after I have purchased it, regardless of the manufacturer's wishes, I don't think I can support buying DJI's otherwise-excellent products any longer. The firmware updates and activation locks and flight restrictions imposed by the DJI Go app are too onerous.

If I buy a tool, and the tool now belongs to me, the manufacturer attempting to restrict my use of that tool is morally unjustifiable.

(Yes, I have an iPhone, and yes, I'm pissed off about that, too.)

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I've never considered buying a drone however I would certainly not buy one that required an app + required user account to operate a piece of offline equipment.

I had my 1st experience with a Mavic Air this past weekend. It is an amazing piece of tech and the vids are beautiful. I was unaware, however, of it's online requirement. It operated fine where no cell signal exists, so there must be a way to dark comm it. However, I wouldn't give them $ in the first place with such a requirement.

Too bad, I was considering one in lieu of a full frame dslr. Looks like hi-res, poorly shot photos are back on the menu.

You don't have to be online while flying just logged in the app at some point in the past.

Even their handheld video cameras require online activation. It’s madness.

It seems like a pretty reasonable default to prevent people from flying in no-fly zones or impose height limits next to airports I think. As that’s security related and not some artificial limitation so they can up sell something else I don’t see anything wrong with that.

The way the altitude limit is imposed is idiotic. It doesn't factor terrain height, so flying around mountains is impossible.

I've been flying various multicopters for a decade and the mavic pro was the last DJI product I'll ever purchase. Every software update for DJI products restricts their functionality to a subset of what they shipped with. This has been going on for years. People buy dedicated phones/tablets for their DJI product and keep them in airplane mode to prevent this. That's nuts.

> It doesn't factor terrain height, so flying around mountains is impossible.

What do you mean by that? I've been flying around the Austrian alps without any problems but when I'm at home I can't go higher than xxx meters above my town because it's within the flight path of a local airport. Which seems to be a reasonable approach?

The software limits height by allowing 400ft of elevation above the takeoff height. So it's tricky to take off at the base of a mountain and fly up the side because you'll be restricted at 400ft from the start point, despite it actually being totally legal provided you remain less than 400ft from the mountain at the point directly below the drone.

Ah, that makes sense. Thanks for clarifying.

If I buy a tool, the only person preventing me from breaking the law with that tool should be me.

Otherwise it’s not my tool, it’s in service to the manufacturer, the government, or some shade in between. Those aren’t good tools, because they can only be used for certain purposes, in certain circumstances.

I prefer tools that do exactly what I wish them to do, for better or worse.

I upvoted you, not because I agree, but because you raised a reasonable point that clearly generated some intelligent debate. I think the problem is that modern technology has resulted in cheaply available "tools" (to use your term) that have the capacity to cause great and irreparable harm to large numbers of other people (see the comments regarding drones and airplanes, for instance), and consequently must be proactively restricted, not merely regulated after the fact with criminal or civil penalties. Such is the nature of the modern world that produced technologies like the drone. We can no longer afford to leave the use of these technologies up to the good judgment of individuals, because there will always be a minority who can't or won't exercise it.

The iPhone is another question entirely, I agree with you there.

I strongly disagree.

as a matter of principle, I don't accept that a device I own should do anything more or less that what I tell it to do.

I don't expect HN to agree with me on this principle, so I will also present a practical argument. these kinds of controls that protect users from wrongdoing tend to be implemented incredibly crudely. my house is close enough to a major airport that it triggers DJI's flight restriction. if the drone happens to get a GPS fix inside my house it will deactivate itself and land. there's no way a small drone can be a threat to the public when it's hovering inside my living room, and I'm pretty sure the legal restrictions don't apply inside of a structure anyway.

I, as a member of the public, am glad you don't get to decide, with your own judgement, what is and isn't safe to do around an airport in this specific case. Honestly, I wish more laws could be enforced this way.

Your judgement, in aggregate, can safely be assumed to suck, by me, someone who doesn't know you. It may not actually suck, but in situations where you can clearly and obviously harm me (hitting a plane with your drone), I don't want you to have any choices in the matter. Sorry, but others have ruined the fun for both of us.

This is a fascinating discussion that I think gets to the heart of the matter, but is still missing the key point: can you ever own something with software?

I up voted the sibling comment (diminoten) even though it was a bit aggressive. Leetcrew say s/he doesn't trust the controls programmed "crudely" by others. But the sibling logically points out that leetcrew's actions could be just as crude from the others' point of view.

I think leetcrew's principles are misdirected here. With software, you can't really own the device. Look at the librem5 debacle: you can't control the radios because the FCC doesn't license unlocked radios. If you had a ham license you could buy and operate any radio the way you want (within the rules). What's really missing is disclosure. DJI should be clearly documenting their software controls and all geographic restrictions so you know exactly what capabilities you are paying for.

I'm glad you brought up ham radio licenses. drones can certainly be dangerous if they are misused. although it would be inconvenient for me, I would not oppose stricter licensing requirements for drones and other potentially dangerous products. it could even be required to buy one in the first place. requiring a license says something like "we need to know that you understand the rules and are capable of following them". software controls imply "we don't trust you to follow the rules, even if you understand them". I realize this is a matter of opinion, but I think the second message is just inappropriate for a citizen in a free society.

But the free market is working: there are permitless drones available (with idiot-proofing software), or you can buy or build a "DRM-free" drone, and now the gov't essentially says you need a permit/license to fly it. I've seen youtube channels of the commercial drone pilots (ads/TV/cinema) who had to spend $10K+ to get a pilot's license.

There is still a middle ground of "unlocked" drones that you only need to register with FAA to use, but you still need to follow the rules yourself. But it is in the drone manufacturers interest to self-regulate to avoid being banned altogether. If too many yahoos and others (see Gatwick incidents) cause problems, authorities can easily kill their profitable industry. So I think these "personal-responsibility" drones will quickly be phased out by the industry.

Ehh, I don’t think that justifies it. Furthermore, it isn’t illegal to sell drones without these restrictions; DJI has done this voluntarily.

There have always been tools of mass destruction available in our society. You can buy unlimited quantities of gasoline and propane without the nozzle tips doing a cryptographic handshake ensuring that you’re putting it into a car and only a car. Same goes for explosives. They’re readily available, without scrutiny. It’s sufficient having laws against murder and blowing things up.

We don’t need technological restrictions. Indeed, the law does not require them for drones. This is purely DJI being proactive and fucking their customers.

The potential harm that can be caused by a <2lb quadcopter is utterly microscopic compared to the damage that can be caused by motor vehicles. Yet the regulatory burden on a small quadcopter is an order of magnitude more complex than that of a two ton pickup. You have to juggle the requirements of multiple federal agencies, and state and municipal regulations are a dime a dozen.

In most jurisdictions, the regulatory burden of a small quadcopter is significantly greater than that of an AR-15. The potential harm vs utility argument doesn't even register here.

But is this an argument that quadcopters be regulated less, or that motor vehicles be regulated more? We've lived with the carnage motor vehicles wreak mostly out of blind habit: it's taken as normal. But that was true of many destructive activities in the past that we eventually stopped or mitigated. Certainly that's one big motivation for autonomous vehicles, which are the ultimate example of taking control away from the hands of the user.

Go buy a plane and complain about all those pesky flight restrictions.

I know!! As a student pilot I have zero issues with the drone flight restrictions. It's easy to trivialize the rules as a drone pilot, but in an airplane, hitting a drone could be life and death.

Your plane will fly anywhere you, the pilot, command it to. The enforcement of NFZ is done by the pilot, not the equipment.

I am complaining about the equipment, not the NFZ. You would, too, if your aircraft ignored control inputs under certain opaque, manufacturer-supplied (and signed) network-updated conditions.

The hardware’s job is to obey the operator. The operator’s job is to obey the law.

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