That Toy Is Now a Drone

fluxgate (2851685) writes "A notice from the FAA announced earlier this week just turned a bunch of kids' toys into drones. In the past, the FAA had made the distinction between model aircraft (allowed) and drones (prohibited without special permission) according to whether they were used for recreation (okay) or commercial purposes (verboten). Now they have further narrowed the definition of model aircraft: If you fly it through video goggles, it no longer qualifies. This move eliminates First Person View (FPV) radio control flying. I'm an editor at IEEE Spectrum with a special interest and blogged about this disturbing development as soon as I heard the news."

Comments

Re:They're infringing my Second-Amendment drone ri

[zippthorne]

I'm not sure that the FAA has the authority to regulate the quadcopter in the first place, but the quadcopter-with-a-gun is certainly a weapon, so why wouldn't it be protected by the second amendment?

side note: To all those who say, "because that sounds super dangerous" the response is to draft a constitutional amendment to allow the government to regulate more things. Simply "interpreting" away the teeth of the second amendment merely encourages contempt of the constitution and all the other things protected by other clauses and amendments are sure to be abridged in the same manner.

Further side note: Perhaps it's me, but I've noticed over the past few years that while both congress and the people are interested in "regulating drones," both parties seem to have very different ideas about what will be regulated. Congress seems to want to regulate the use of drones by private individuals, but the clamor from the public seems to be about the use of drones by the state for surveillance or armed action. The whole thing is shaping up not unlike the calls for "immigration reform" where each party's ideas about what the reform should be are other parties' ideas about what needs to be fixed.

Re:Not surprised, mixed feelings

[russotto]

The difference is that few would argue that going hunting by connecting your gun to a couple of $9 servos, and operating it over a glitchy radio link where you have a tiny field of view through a bad camera, and it may randomly go off if you lose radio is a sane thing to do.

The FAA opposes that, but they're perfectly fine with operating it over a glitchy radio link where all you have is a Mk I eyeball located a thousand feet away.