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Drone-Based Businesses: Growing In Canada, Grounded In the US
An anonymous reader writes: As small drones become affordable, and as clever people come up with ideas on how to use them, we've been hearing about more and more plans for drone-based business. In the U.S., the Federal Aviation Administration was quick to shut down such ideas in order to give themselves time to regulate the nascent industry. Not so, in Canada. Thanks to a simple permit system, anyone wanting to use a drone for commercial purposes can do so in Canada by simply applying and waiting a few weeks. Around 1,500 of these permits have been granted already, and Canada's private drone industry is flourishing as a result. Drones have been used for agriculture analysis, TV production, real estate photography, law enforcement, and many other tasks.
Regulation is a word that bristles the hair about your neck, but there are enough flaws in the human condition that we pretty much need some rules to protect us from each other.
This may be one of those times.
So basically what you're saying is humans are flawed, so we need some flawed humans to make rules for the rest of the flawed humans? If the people can't be trusted to make decisions for themselves, then how can we trust that they made good decisions when they voted for the current set of elected officials?
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
Yes, and congress passed a law requiring the FAA to produce such regulations in a timely fashion due in this coming year. The administration has said they will not obey that law, and will not have such a framework in anything like the timely fashion required.
... because that's commercial drone use! The employees of US-based companies that have for years stepped out back of their shops to test-fly a new RC airplane or multirotor will, according to the Obama administration's new interpretation, be breaking the law and subject to substantial fines for being paid to fly unmanned aerial systems. We can't have that! Quick! Shut down all of those businesses and jobs! Chase those retailers out of the country!
... no, there's got to be a way to make it all MORE miserable, MORE expensive, MORE punitive, and nearly impossible for small entrepreneurs to get into - because otherwise we might miss out on some more federal fees, and intrusive paperwork.
In the meantime, the administration has published an "interpretation" of the 2012 law that says they take it to mean more or less the exact opposite of its plain intent, and they are busy getting ready to fine people for doing things like participating in RC competitions (you know, like we've been having for decades) that happen to involve things like $20 cash prizes
It's preposterous. We're not just dragging behind the rest of the world, we're actively taking steps backwards. The administration is deliberately, purposefully, putting the brakes on what would otherwise be a multi-billion dollar industry full of innovation and attractive to STEM-types in this country. The left's instinct to Nanny State their way down into every last aspect of what someone might do to conduct some business (hey, kid, quit flying your $250, 2-pound plastic quad-copter with a cheap camera over your neighbor's roof because he asked you to, and said he'd give you $25 to get pictures of his roof gutters for him - if you don't cease and desist such commercial UAV operations, that's going to be a $10,000 fine!) means they can't simply clone the sort of framework that the UK or Canada have long had in place
And as usual, the very idiots that we'd most worry about anyway, who will be getting a drone from Amazon tomorrow and flying it over a park full of kids an hour later without any understanding of safe operations or good manners, will completely ignore the FAA's rules/guidance/regs anyway. The government, which is here to help you, will only be placing the painful burden and expense on the very people who are the most responsible anyway: those with a lot to lose because they're in business to use the technology.
More Hope and Change, hard at work for our economy. Yes, Obama's man Huerta at the FAA is a political appointee and that aspect of the food chain lays the FAA's entire posture on this squarely at the door of the White House.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
As a researcher in the U.S. at a public university who's developing the use of UAS as an aerial remote sensing platform, having the FAA dragging its feet on coming up with a sensible solution is fueling a growing disservice to our nation's students. It's been recommended that we don't involve students or conduct any testing with our *government funded* grants in the U.S. (so we're doing it outside the country) that employ such technology for fear of being classed a commercial use and risking the hassle of dealing with the regulatory fall-out of attracting FAA attention. And that's even with us performing best-practices that any commercial pilot would be conducting (logs, flight plans, equipment checklists, etc.). Red-tape is killing any edge we might have had in developing and employing this tech. If the government isn't careful we're going to need another trade agreement and subsidies to be competitive by the time the regulations fall in place.
The government can earn money from regulation fees, someone can use regulation to stifle competition . . . so regulation is also about profit . . . for somebody.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
Basically every idiot in this country would now, gleefully, throw away his rights and sell his immortal soul for the (false) promises of "safety" and "security".
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!