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Comment by syshum | Hacker News Reader

One big difference here, is that for these other recreational activities the license is only required if you doing them on public lands, however on private land you do not need a hunting license, or fishing license at all

From what I understand these FAA rules apply even if i am operating a drone in my back yard.

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Yes, because there is no such thing as unregulated airspace. The FAA governs all navigable airspace, and a drone has no minimum flight altitude, so literally any outdoor flight is within their purview.

I am aware that is the FAA Position, I am also aware that United States v. Causby The US Surpreme Court reject the US Government claim "to possess all airspace above the United States down to ground level" holding that a Military jet flying at an altitude 83ft is a violation of the land owners rights to their property, aka the low altitude airspace

Further navigable airspace under current regulations starts at 500feet above ground or structures

Additionally, the FAA only regulates buildings that are 200ft above the ground or more (unless they are near an airport), see [1]. It seems ridiculous that the FAA doesn't care if you build a 200ft tall tower and fly a drone inside it but does care if you fly a drone outside at the same height. The FAA likely realizes that regulating all buildings taller than 0ft is a ridiculous proposition while regulating all airspace probably attracts less scrutiny.

[1] https://www.faa.gov/news/updates/?newsId=84336

You need a license to hunt/fish on private land.

Not in Georgia if it is your land or your wife/brother/sister/dependent of you and you all live in the same house hold. You’re still required to get a free deer harvest record or free Turkey stamp etc…. No hunter ED required. [1]

[1] https://georgiawildlife.com/licenses-permits-passes/choose

Not in my state... I am not sure where you live but in every state I am aware of this is not true, though I tend to only live in area's where freedom is respected so...

Edit: I am rate limited but a comment below claims KY does not allow hunting with out a license, yet Offical KY government web sites says you can

"if you are a Kentucky resident hunting on your own property, then neither you, your spouse nor your dependent children need a license or statewide deer permit to harvest a deer. "

https://fw.ky.gov/Hunt/Pages/Deer-Season-FAQ.aspx

This is the regulations I am aware for most states, if you are on your own private land you do not need a license to hunt and fish

I’m not aware of any state where you can hunt wild game on private land without a license. Including states where you would expect that to be the case if it were true anywhere… ND, SD, MT, and KY to name a few. Non-game species and preserve “hunting” are a different matter.

That's very interesting. Worth moving to Kentucky! Everywhere else I have visited you need a license, and to follow bag limits. Except for non licensed animals: rabbits, squirrels, gophers for example; or predators: cougars, wolves, bears.

My state ( which is not KY) has no resictions either, I verified it just now as I had not looked at the regulations in several years as I do not hunt normally so I wanted to see if they had changed since the last I looked, but no changes.

A land owner is free to hunt, fish, etc on their own land with no license in my state

The key difference is that if you're flying anything, you're not operating 'in [your] back yard' - the FAA has purview over that airspace.

Yes I am aware that the FAA claims to have full control over everything down to the ground, I am also aware there is not much case law supporting that position, and in fact the case law seems to indicated the Supreme Court could be in a position to limit the FAA's authority to 100ft and higher, anything lower than that being consider private property.

IMO it is clear unconstitutional taking for the FAA to seize ownership of all the air above my property, with out limit

Your backyard or 100 acre plot, doesn't change a thing, isn't restricted airspace. A plane can fly over it, and the one in a million chance that you're flying your drone high enough to impact a plane or helicopter exists.

Say people just start launching rockets and drones literally anywhere, at any time... How are flight paths supposed to be know ahead of time to avoid collisions? With 45,000ish DAILY commercial flights handled by the FAA, almost 20,000 airports in the US, how exactly do you think you can safely co-exist without catastrophes if people can just start putting stuff up there?

My reaction to this whole "unconstitutional" rebuttal to everything in the US is literally jaw dropping, confused, and wtf... If you're smart enough to not do something stupid, or not put yourself in a position to make mistakes that affect others, thats great. Good for you. There's 350 million other peeps just in your neck of the woods and I can guarantee you that same innate sense of logic and common sense doesn't apply to everyone else. When a stupid move can put the lives of 100s of others at risk, or cost a ton of money every time they need to intervene, I'm not sure you get to just throw around "me myself and I and my constitution" and actually come out not sounding like a 1 year old throwing a tantrum because he's told to not wipe poop on everything and everyone.

How many hundreds of millions or billions would have to be wasted in downtime, planes crashes, car crashes, lives lost, random injuries, before we ask people to do the equivalent of reading the dumb ass common sense instructions that came with the toy that is way more than a toy?

>>My reaction to this whole "unconstitutional" rebuttal to everything in the US is literally jaw dropping, confused, and wtf.

Well the constitution is where the Government derives is power from, I know it is a concept most people (even US Citizens to not ) understand. The Constitution is a document that explicitly outlines what the government can do, if the constitution does not grant the authority than the government has no power over that thing.

This is far different than most government organization where constitutions apply more to the people not the government, meaning the constitutions in many nations assume the government is all powerful and simply grants some rights to the people for which the government is barred from infringing.

This is not true for the US, as the founder of the US recognize that our Rights are natural rights bestowed upon us by our creator, we are self governing for which we organized a government and granted that government a very LIMITED amount of power.

>>Say people just start launching rockets and drones literally anywhere, at any time... How are flight paths supposed to be know ahead of time to avoid collisions? With 45,000ish DAILY commercial flights handled by the FAA, almost 20,000 airports in the US, how exactly do you think you can safely co-exist without catastrophes if people can just start putting stuff up there?

That is easy, as my other comments have laid out I am talking about low altitude situation, not many planes under 100ft or even 500 feet, there should be no issue with the FAA only regulating things above say 500ft

>>the one in a million chance that you're flying your drone high enough to impact a plane or helicopter exists.

So 1:1,000,000 is the statistical floor for you? You might want to rethink that because if that is your risk tolerance that more or less makes everything illegal. Hopefully you have at least some respect for freedom, and are not a complete totalitarian, pretty sure you said in another comment "you are all for freedom" but if you want to outlaw everything that has a 1:1,000,000 chance of unsafe event well I dont think you have any respect for freedom at all

> A plane can fly over it

Maybe it shouldn't. Ground vehicles need to purchase land to operate, maybe planes needn't have right of way over private property.

> I'm not sure you get to just throw around "me myself and I and my constitution"

You absolutely get to. Planes are operated at profit - "me, myself an I" for a private corporation.

I'm not sure I'm convinced the FAA's claim to airspace above private property is unconstitutional. Just as there's not a lot of precedent firmly establishing the FAA's purview in low altitude airspace, there's also not much precedent that land ownership conveys a right to airspace usage beyond the right to place structures upon the land that happen to occupy that airspace. Further, there's a clear parallel here to the FCC's purview over EM spectrum usage that does have significantly more precedent backing it, so I would expect that to set the groundwork for any future case law on the airspace matter.

In any case, it's an area that certainly needs much greater clarity than there is today.

Such as?

The Supreme Court in UNITED STATES v. CAUSBY says "The landowner owns at least as much of the space above the ground as the can occupy or use in connection with the land" They say nothing about structures being the only use, in fact they implicitly say in the ruling "The fact that he does not occupy it in a physical sense—by the erection of buildings and the like—is not material."

In that case the Supreme Court held that a plane flying at an altitude of 83ft violated the property rights of the land owner. It should not be much of a stretch to then claim the FAA regulating my use of airspace 0-83ft is an unconstitutional taking.

Even today I believe the FAA Navigable Airspace starts at 500ft above ground elevation.

It would be an interesting case if ever made it to the supreme court, I dont think the FAA's position is as strong as you believe it to be

You might be right. But this isn't about who has control. It's about making sure drone operators know where their wild-west airspace ends and the FAAs begins. How many people have purchased a drone and decided to see how high they could go without even knowing there are rules about that? The point isn't to track you or regulate you, it's to make sure you've at least read the rules even if you have no intention of flying beyond your back yard.

it seems we approach government power and the role of government from inverse positions

Your post seems to have the connotation of a "guilty until proven innocent" type of world view, where I must prove that I would not be a danger to others or would not fly a drone outside of my own back yard

That is not what I would consider a free society, I do not need to prove I will refrain from harming others in order to engage in a transaction to buy something, there are all kinds of every day products that could be (and have been) used in very violent ways, we do not have regulations on their sale.

In a free society a government needs a clear, articulable reasonable suspicion that an individual is going to cause harm to others. Not just a general suspicion that someone somewhere may cause harm. An application of general suspicion would not be a free society but rather an extremely Authoritarian society

It follows because you may be taking off from private land but you're operating in federal airspace (all airspace is federal in the US)

All airspace? Not even airspace above, say, 500 feet?

Am I literally walking through federal airspace right now?

The U.S. Constitution is pretty explicit about physical space that is allocated to the federal government and the reasons (post offices and post roads, military installations, and that's about it), so laying claim to every square inch of "air" above that land seems to be quite a stretch.

Yes, all airspace. If you're out walking, driving, or erecting a structure, you're entitled to its usage provided you're not creating an air navigation hazard. The general understanding is that you're entitled to airspace on your property, and to a limited extent on the property of others, insofar as the usage of that airspace is necessary to use the land itself. Flying anything is not, from a legal and regulatory perspective, understood to be a usage related to the land itself.

This issue has been settled for quite some time in US law. The main grey areas that exist are debates over what sorts of exceptions should be made for reasonable use of UAV/drones at low altitudes.

I've always wondered about the edge conditions.

Would flying a drone indoors require permission from FAA? What about a daredevil jump on a motorcycle?

As long as there's a roof, you can fly whatever you want indoors without the FAA's interference.

As for airborne ground vehicles - it's difficult to imagine a situation where it would legitimately be a concern, which is why it's a grey area :)

I'm actually in the UK and it appears until relatively recently, the CAA did assert control over indoor airspace. But recently they've relaxed the rules and said if there's no possiblity of escape, you can do what you want.

That does mean technically that if you're flying a drone indoors, the legality depends on how wide you open the windows.

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