FAA Taking a Look At News Corp's Use of Drone

nonprofiteer writes "The News Corp iPad newspaper has a drone they've been using for news gathering — mainly flying it over disaster zones in N. Dakota and Alabama. However, FAA regulations on drones are very restrictive at the moment, and they're not supposed to be used for commercial purposes (law enforcement is free to use them). The FAA is now examining The Daily's use of its drone. Could this set a precedent for how private businesses can use drones?"

Comments

Re:Drone vs. RC

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

When it remains a toy, it has certain market size, R&D effort, usage numbers. When it becomes commercial, the market size and the development takes a completely different path. Basic assumption is that as long as they are toys, the numbers and sizes will remain small. If and when toys get out of hand, they come under regulation. When the jet-skis came in first, they were toys and were not regulated. Once they became really big, fast and powerful and started running a few swimmers over, they come under regulation.

Of course, it can't be explained in a 30 second sound bite. Sorry if I have exceeded your attention span.