Slashdot Mirror
NoFlyZone.org Aims To Keep the Airspace Above Your Home Drone-Free
Zothecula writes About the only thing growing quicker than the number of privately owned drones is the level of concern surrounding them. Questions of privacy and how these things can be regulated are pretty well-founded, but are so far yet to be met with any convincing answers. NoFlyZone.org may go some way to providing a solution, allowing users to enter their address to create drone-free zones in the airspace over their homes.
Back in my day, we called them RC helicopters.
The Internet King? I wonder if he could provide faster nudity.
the address and its GPS coordinates ... is then relayed to drone manufacturers to create a geofence around the home and render their products unable to fly over the property.
So we're going to count on the manufacturers to voluntarily add a feature to their drones that makes them unable to fly in a huge list of tiny spaces? Oh okay. This should solve everything. /sarcasm
I've learned that they're worthless, so I don't read AC comments anymore.
Users visit NoFlyZone.org and enter their home address along with some basic information. This data is then processed by the NoFlyZone.org database, which registers the address and its GPS coordinates. This information is then relayed to drone manufacturers to create a geofence around the home and render their products unable to fly over the property.
They're asking for manufacturers to voluntarily respect this list and disable their drones from flying in those zones. Now, whether this will work is another discussion.
I've learned that they're worthless, so I don't read AC comments anymore.
So, what is being suggested is that every drone carry with it every person's address that doesn't want a drone above it?
Doesn't that sound a whole lot like a list of addresses the police would love to have? And if you sign up for this list, then somebody who uses a drone for nefarious purposes will respect this address, as opposed to (say) disabling the GPS receiver?
This is a great idea, because we know that you never get unsolicited cell phone calls from Credit Card Services or "Hi, Seniors..."
This is without a doubt the most ridiculous solution to a problem that doesn't exist that I have ever come across.
So, let me state the obvious, just in case someone has missed it: That genie is out of the bottle, and there's no putting her back in.
Don't take life too seriously; it isn't permanent.
I read the TFA. They still don't have the authority to do jack-diddly-squat. They got a list of people who don't want drones, and they're prepared to write sternly worded letters to manufacturers, woo hooooo. The FAA has actual, legitimate regulatory authority. One of these people is worth writing to, and the other is not.
None at all .. this is what happens when groups of corporations try to stave off being regulated under the myth that they can, and will, self-regulate in any meaningful way.
This is pretty much an empty promise, likely backed by an EULA they can change at any time, and which will give them access to your information they can do anything they want to with.
My read of TFA is "this is utterly meaningless drivel".
There is no authority, just an empty promise by corporations -- it's a PR stunt, nothing more.
You might as well set up a web site which says "No Rob Zone", so all of those other criminals know you do not wish to be robbed ... it's about as meaningful.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
I suspect that NoFlyZone is just a front for a bunch of lawyers looking to file a class action lawsuit. Just look at their methodology. They gather a bunch of names and submit this to the manufacturers of these drones. Then if the manufacturers don't somehow comply (I'm not even sure how they're supposed to), then that opens them up to a class action from said requesters.
Reminds me of those groups in NYC that lawyers used to hire to go around and document cracks in the city sidewalks. Ostensibly they were supposed to be serving the public good. In actuality, they were just a front that was providing a database for lawyers to use to sue the city anytime someone tripped on a crack.
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
It's a "solution" that only a libertarian would think is workable. Instead of enforceable government regulation, it's a voluntary opt-in system run by a private entity, which will work because all people are "rational actors" who will see that their self-interest is served by it. Or something.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
Why even bother with this? My shotgun provides for a much more effective no-fly zone over my house than this website ever could.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
There's two principal problems with do not call lists:
1) There are usually so many holes and exemptions in them as to render them useless
2) The people violating it are probably knowingly scamming you, already breaking the law, and doing it from outside your country
The exemptions in 1) to give businesses an exemption to do caller ID spoofing, so they could use off-shore call centers are exactly why offshore call centers use caller ID spoofing to run these things.
In fact, I'd bet often it's the same offshore call centers who call for the "legit" companies as call for the scams. it's not like the phone company can't actually tell it's from somewhere else and the caller ID is fake.
If they'd simply block calls with fake caller ID, this would stop. But the corporations who want to save money off calling you have made it such that that will never happen.
This is why you don't let corporations have say in the regulatory process -- because they undermine the point of it so much that it becomes ineffective. Which suits their purposes, but defeats the purpose of regulating in the first place.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Your reasoning is backwards. You think that without the FAA, corporations could do whatever they want over your property and the FAA protects you from big, evil corporations. But that's not at all what has happened. Before regulation and the FAA (i.e., without the act establishing the FAA), corporations couldn't legally fly over your land at all, because historically, you owned all the airspace over your property, and you could enforce those rights in a court of law.
But Congress passed laws that effectively strip you of most rights to the airspace over your property because the budding airline industry lobbied for it. Obviously, a completely unrestricted handout to corporations would really not end well, so the FAA was created to dole out the absolute minimum level of protection to you through regulation after your property rights had been stripped away. The FAA doesn't give you protection or give you rights, it is a mechanism for taking away your rights, it just limits how much it strips you of your rights in order to remain politically feasible.
I think having airspace a few thousand feet up be public airspace, usable by airlines and commercial flights, is actually reasonable. But under current laws, corporations can and will lobby the FAA to allow drones to fly low over your land much lower, and the FAA will force land owners to live with those drone flights; you have no recourse.
I doubt when the FAA was created, Congress considered the possibility of millions of flights a few dozen feet above private property, and the aviation act should be modified to establish a height limit below which FAA has no authority and you control what happens over your land. That is, Congress should simply pass a law that everything below, say, 3000 ft above ground level, is indisputably private property and not subject to FAA regulation (possibly establishing easements around existing airports, given that those properties effectively have already priced in that nuisance). That would be compatible with existing piloted flights, and for drone flights, well, operators would either have to fly up high enough to avoid annoying you, or they would have to negotiate flight corridors (probably mostly over roads, but towns and HOAs could, of course, decide to grant permission for lower flights for larger areas).
The whole idea is riddled with problems just waiting to happen. How will they know I live where I say I live? Are they going to verify that?
What's stopping me registering the property of a drone operator so they can't fly in their own property?
What's stopping me entering my address, and all of my neighbours?
If a drone still flies over my property, who do I sue?
If the last owner of my house made it a no-fly zone, but I want to fly drones in my back yard, how do I remove my house from the list?
What's stopping me asking to remove other peoples' house from the list?
Does having a drone flying one foot outside of my property boundary really differ from a drone flying one foot inside my property boundary? It can still see over my property.
From what I've read, once a homeowner enters his address, it takes a while for it to be incorporated into a firmware update and eventually downloaded to user's devices. So it stands to reason that it would also take a while to get an address removed from firmware updates. So, let's say I don't like drones AT ALL. I just don't like those damned things buzzing around all over the place at all. So I just enter the addresses of all of my neighbors ... hell, everyone within a mile of me, whatever. Now those poor fools can't fly their drones in their own yards ... and it'll take them months (?) to sort it out.
Seems like it has the potential to cause far more grief than it prevents.
Pilot here : 3000 feet is WAY too high for one thing. Somedays I never get above 1000 feet. The other thing is a "be careful what you wish for" issue. Right now the FAA can and will come after me if I fly lower than 1000 feet over your house. If you make an "FAA free zone" for me to play under, you might not like the results.
You should probably get off this site, then... :)
Touche. I have been coming here so long, I forgot.
Good-bye
Well, neither am I, with a 6 pound piece of metal with propellers spinning at 3000+ RPM right above my head, controlled by someone who doesn't have the single clue of how to crab for a cross-wind landing.
How does crabbing for a landing affect their ability to fly above you? Or is this just an unrelated skill you are demanding as an example? If they are at 100'+ over your property and headed past (not circling), their complete ignorance of aerodynamics will have no effect on you.
Learn to love Alaska