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FAA Says Ad-Bearing YouTube Drone Videos Constitute "Commercial Use"
schwit1 writes If you fly a drone and post footage on YouTube, you could end up with a letter from the Federal Aviation Administration. Earlier this week, the agency sent a legal notice to Jayson Hanes, a Tampa-based drone hobbyist who has been posting drone-shot videos online for roughly the last year. The FAA said that, because there are ads on YouTube, Hanes's flights constituted a commercial use of the technology subject to stricter regulations and enforcement action from the agency. It said that if he did not stop flying 'commercially,' he could be subject to fines or sanctions.
Can someone point out to me which part of the 1st Amendment it is in?
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
...to Google's lawyers.
don't go away mad. just go away.
Their rule in itself is extremely silly, but I suppose that is another matter.
He's making money from flying his drone, so what's the problem?
The FCC says this is "commercial" because the drone's videos were posted to YouTube and because YouTube has advertisements, even though the drone operator gets zero profit from those ads.
... what if the drone were flying a banner (and not recording a video)? Is that an advertisement? What if the banner said "Vote for Joe Candidate" and nothing else?
Use my userscript to add story images to Slashdot. There's no going back.
Apparently the FAA isn't browisng with the right browser plugins.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
I guess the FAA is a commercial website now? It IS on the internet, after all. And the internet has ads.
It does not appear that this drone operator was making money himself. The FAA doesn't want a cut of the profit (even 100% of $0 is zero), so this is perhaps more complicated than it may seem.
That said, even if they were to demand a cut of Google's profits from the YouTube ads, the collection process would cost the FAA more than the take-home.
Use my userscript to add story images to Slashdot. There's no going back.
what is with the american hatred of anyone who isn't already rich making money? sure are a lot of barriers to conducting business in a "capitalist" and "free" society.
The commercial use regulations are OBVIOUSLY meant to keep people from flying passengers or freight when they don't know what they're doing. Uploading a video to youtube from a drone does not endanger the public in any way so long as it's not being used to stalk somebody or invade their privacy. Obviously, footage from public spaces taken too high to make out individuals does neither of those things.
So, here's the point of the subject line: If we're going to apply laws and regulations to the utmost literal interpretation without any kind of reason or sensibility, then why don't we fire the FAA and replace them with robots? The only benefit to having actual humans perform these duties is that they can apply some measure of human common sense, whereas software would mechanically interpret everything exactly as programmed with no regard for the details.
If Haynes has monetized his channel, then any filming he does for it is commercial filming. YouTube videos are a full-time job for some people.
If he owned a plane, took a camera on it, filmed stuff from it, and got money when people watched the film, that would be commercial flying. This is no different.
The FAA's job is to regulate flying objects. it has no business fiddling with advertising. Time to cut its budget until it stays within its statutory boundaries.
Can we just call it what it is? It's a "toy helicopter", not a "drone". That helps get the conversation on the right track.
Do you have ESP?
Give an idiot power and that idiot WILL abuse the power.
And that's exactly what is going on here.
without a license? (pronounced "lee sons" - see "The Pink Panther - Peter Sellers" "Do you have a lee sons for your moon kay?" "Show me the lee sons!"
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
You know what? Prove that the video was shot within the confines of US airspace. Recognizable dandmarks are present, you say? Well, then prove that it's not a computer rendering and is, in fact, a drone-shot video.
Overbearing motherfuckers.
sig: sauer
The FAA is in a tough position. For everyone on here saying "it's not the drone guy making the money", etc. there's a dozen sharp operators out there figuring out a way to do something currently restricted (commercial use of drones) without following the rules (and the rules for commercial operations are for safety.. visible line of sight, operator certification, etc.).
The FAA, like most safety organizations, takes a very conservative and slow approach. Every bureaucrat there probably lives in fear of saying "sure, fly that drone", and then being hauled up in front of Congress to testify "how could you let that drone fly into that preschool and maim all those children"..
So for today.. drone op needs a pilot's license.. it's the only thing the FAA currently has on the books that assures you know the rules of the road/air/operation, and since it's expensive to get one (35 hours of flight time), they have a reasonably good club to hold: do bad things and we suspend/revoke your license.
I would imagine that in time (probably 4-5 years) there will be a "drone operators" certificate of some sort.. know the rules of operation, but not need significant seat time in a plane. (Although I would add that I learned a lot more about practical application of the flight rules sitting in the seat than I did reading the AIM for ground school).
As for the "visual observer". It would be difficult to convince me that the drones available *today* provide anywhere near the visibility for the operator needed to "see and avoid" other traffic. People sitting in the front seats of small planes and helicopters (which have very good all around visibility) have trouble "seeing and avoiding", and there's relatively few of them in the air in any given time and place (the "big sky" effect). Your little first person video view out the front of your drone is what, about 70 degree FOV?
Here's an experiment. Take your car and cover the windshield and side windows, except for a one foot square hole in front of the driver. Now tell me it's safe, and you can see and avoid other traffic.
Um, this craft is NOT a drone, not by a long chalk. A drone is an autonomous vehicle, capable of taking off, flying a pre-programmed route and landing. This is always under human copntrol at all times so it's just a radio controlled aircraft.
Sigh.
-- Fuck Beta
Can we just call it what it is? It's a "toy helicopter", not a "drone". That helps get the conversation on the right track.
No it doesn't. That just sidetracks the conversation completely and leads into another unrelated thread in which someone points out that "drone" is a colloquial superset of UAVs that includes "toy helicopter," the aircraft in this article, and whatever more limited definition you have in your head. It's pointless, non-contributory pedantry.
What if you take photos of you flying a drone and a magazine buys the right to use your photos in their magazine, does that constitute commercial use?
If someone makes a painting of you flying a drone and then you sell the painting, does that constitute commercial use?
Both examples above would constitute commercial use of technology according to the FAA's definition of it since you get a monetary gain from flying your drone.
Which leads me to ask this: Isn't there model flying competitions where you can win prizes which is worth a lot of money, does that constitute commercial use of technology too???
--- Reality doesn't care about your opinions, it happens anyway and if you are in the way you'll get squished.
very easy now to raise money with the latest way everyone has been using this method and it is time you turn http://www.riyanldd.com/2015/0...
So saying "The FAA says that YouTube drone videos constitute Commercial Use" is perhaps a bit misleading, and here is why:
1. The FAA is composed o a number of groups. There is the headquarters in Washington, various directorates which are responsible for regulating different types of aircraft (Like the Transport Airplane Directorate in Seattle), a bunch of Aircraft Certification Offices (ACOs) that deal with the approval of new and changed aircraft designs and parts, Manufacturing Inspection District Offices (MIDOs) that deal with approving the actual manufacture of the parts the ACO approved, and finally the area relevant to this discussion, the Flight Standards District Offices (FSDOs, often pronounced Fizdos) who make sure pilots and aircraft mechanics are following the rules. (I left out the Air Traffic Controllers and a bunch of other groups here. They are also important, but not at all relevant to this story.)
2. So there are a lot of FSDO offices. There are five in Florida alone. Individual FSDO offices have a TON of variation. Getting a field approval from one FSDO may be no problem, while another will just laugh at you and say no way. Every office takes it's own unique view of the regulations and is highly resistant to any pressure from above to change. It got so bad that a few years ago Headquarters launched a "Consistency & Standardization Initiative" with the express goal of reducing this type of variation (this does not just apply to FSDOs).
3. In my experience the Florida FSDOs were some of the hardest to work with. I suspect part of the reason may be overwork. There are a LOT of pilots and planes in Florida and that generates a lot of paperwork, which may stress out the inspectors. I don't KNOW that. Just my guess.
So this story is just about a letter from one overworked FAA civil servant who took an over-expansive view of the FAAs model aircraft policy. It's not a new policy statement from the FAA. IANAL, but I would guess that so long as the pilot is not profiting personally from his videos, this would never rise to the level of an enforcement action. I am curious if after getting this letter the RC operator or his lawyer called the inspector's boss? In my experience most folks at the FAA are smart and reasonable people.
Bottom line? Nothing to see here. Move along.
if his channel is a majority of drone vids, and he's getting ad revenue...he's using the vids to make money
Any unmanned aircraft is a drone - even the Cox 049 powered plane on a string.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
Too many of these agencies are out of control. Congress needs to go through them one at a time and cut them back to what is useful.
The "drones" which are just remote controlled helicopters in most cases, are no threat to aircraft unless they're flying very high or near airports.
The FAA only exists to make air travel safe.
If a "drone" isn't doing anything that could endanger commercial or military airplanes... then the FAA has no business saying anything about it one way or the other.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
Oh I remember those. They were fun. I wonder if the FAA would go after you for tailing a banner add behind them?
A drone can be remotely piloted or autonomous.
OK so make sure there are no identifying marks on your drone and wear a mask and you just filmed someone else's drone and put it on your site. Oops there i go making sense again.
I'm spreading my vagina wide for you FAA, please bury your nose in it and take a deep inhale
That is all
Nothing posted to
When drones are outlawed, only outlaws will have drones.
The govt is afraid of drones in the public hands - it's out of their control.
Then there was the guy who would take drone footage of real-estate for free, then charge a whopping fee for editing.
FCC FTW! FAA WTF?
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
The FAAâ(TM)s goal is to promote voluntary compliance by educating individual UAS operators about how they can operate safely under current regulations and laws,â the agency said. âoeThe FAAâ(TM)s guidance calls for inspectors to notify someone with a letter and then follow up. The guidance does not include language about advertising. The FAA will look into the matter.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
You appear to be one of those folks who thinks the sky would fall and he would die of starvation if the government did not tell him what to eat, die of dehydration without a government regulator telling him what and when to drink, and be unable to get from point A to point B without government oversight. This is a shocking inversion of what it is to "be American".
You responded to the earlier poster with "You are advocating shutting down the mechanisms that make aviation possible."... do you understand that aviation arose in the US before there was ANY regulation of the air over our heads?!?!?!? In fact, the government funded a professor named Langley to invent the airplane and he was unable to do it with the full support of the government - it took a couple of bicycle builder brothers to "make aviation possible". All the early aviation development happened BEFORE government stuck its nose into things. As a largely unregulated industry, it was even quite affordable. Many early aviators, like Lindberg, Wiley Post, etc traded things like motorcycles or some work at a private airfield for their first airplanes. NOBODY can do that today because all the regulations make everything related to flight far too expensive. It does not have to be this way. A small very limited federal authority could establish certain very simple and basic rules and then get out of the way, BUT the impulse of bureacrats in big agencies in Washington DC with broad powers is to micro-regulate EVERYTHING. Every new rule is justification for a bigger budget, more employees, more power, more prestige, etc. There is simply NO incentive for the Federal government to be efficient, effective, have a minimal footprint on the industries and activities it regulates, etc.
You then asked that poster "Do you think that shutting down national/international air traffic control is a good idea?" ... as though only government air traffic control works. There's nothing in the laws of physics that says that each airport cannot have private air traffic controllers (it STARTED that way). Much of the system we have today is the combined residue of the depression-era federal jobs programs and the post-WWII put-returning-GIs-to-work efforts. Nothing magical happens when you make somebody a federal government employee that suddenly makes him/mer "better" than when he/she worked in the private sector; indeed all those airline pilots ACTUALLY FLYING THE PLANES (and on one end of each of those radio conversations) is a non-government worker.
And then you asked "Do you think that suspending oversight on aircraft maintenance will keep planes flying safely?" ... thereby displaying extreme ignorance of the issue. The bulk of the oversight you think the FAA is doing is actually being done by individual contractors approved by the FAA but not employed by the FAA. Companies like Boeing and LockMart actually employ their own. The airlines themselves are mostly self-checking their day-to-day work... an entire airline can be destroyed by a single crash so it'd definitely in their self-interest to do so (whereas NO FAA employees suffer at all if a plane crashes). NOBODY at the airlines want their planes to crash, and NO amount of money saved on maintenance will offset the damage done by a major crash. Did all those rules and all that oversight prevent the 787 battery issue??? Nope. The regulatory overhead is small and manageable to mega-corporations. Those regulations however DO suppress all new firms and all new innovations. That overhead is why you have no flying cars here in the 21st century... you see occasional announcements and hype, but it takes YEARS and many millions of dollars to get over the hurdles and by the time you do, the huge costs, divided over a small number of airframes drives the prices up so high that nobody but the very rich can afford them - and that produces a market too small to support the new upstart companies.
The actual FAA employees provide no actual safety; th
Ok, lets start withe the understanding that the FCC has a drone up their butt with regard to drones.
Youtube has nothing to do wirth this, the FCC is just trying a power grab, political and adminstrative turff. If there was a federal DMV it would be doing the same with Telsla and Google Car, just like some States are trying on with Uber and Airbnb.
Now from that perspective, their case looks pointless, and more like bullying.
Remember PBS gets paid when they show ads, even as content producers are disassocitaed from them, that is a comparative measure, not Google's revenues.
which is "riskier" to the general public:
1. a swarm of full-sized manned helicopters hovering low over a residential area shooting video of a fire, a high-speed car chase, etc
- or -
2. a swarm of several pound unmanned drones in the same are filming the same thing
Hmmm??
Accoring to the FAA, the little drones (which are unlikely to harm ANYBODY or destory any significant property should they crash) are the riskier thing. Those manned helicopters operated by TV news channels are operated by pilots with commercial licenses, which is what matters most to the FAA. The potential damage from any crash is of no significant import to them.
The thing that unmasks the dishonesty inherent in this mess is that the FAA demands one set of rules apply if the activity is done "for profit" (i.e. if there is money for the government to grab) but a different set of rules if done as a hobby - it has NOTHING to do with safety. Like much of what the TSA does, it is mostly about money, control, and "security theatre" (and/or "safety theater")
If you have a small drone and operate it below airspace used for manned planes and outside the bubble of airspace around any airport, then the FAA ought to have no involvement. There are already "peeping tom" rules in most localities, so people have a local recourse if their neighbor spies on them with a drone. There are already basic liability laws, so people can go into state courts to sue for damages if a drone operator damages their property in a drone crash.
Yeah...
as someone who actually flies RC Helicopters... they're not toys. They can be dangerous. I fly things large enough that if an untrained person flew, they could quite literally kill someone with it.
Multi-rotors might not have the same amount of force as a larger sized rc helicopter but they can still inflict some serious damage if someone doesn't really know what they're doing with it. Nowadays all the multi-rotors are being sold with gps systems and 'rescue' modes to make it easier for someone to fly with. It's the type of person who will plunk down 1000-2000$+ on one of these things assuming they are toys and flying them over a crowd of kids to take some video... and suddenly the GPS dies and he loses control of it because he has no idea how to control it.
I can only hope that is the kind of situation the FAA is trying to avoid with the 'commercial' use of drones. They don't give a shit if you make a million dollars with it... they just want to make sure you take the proper precautions so that you don't crash into somebody and inflict some permanent harm.
If you want a toy, go buy an airhog. Those are toys.
Read it here.
w00t
are also big enough to go through the processes to properly train their people to ensure they're not causing disasters. Larger drones used for commercial purposes are, well, larger. If one of those toys you buy at Wal-Mart falls out of the sky I'm not so worried. Worst you do is dent my car. If a big commercial drone falls you don't dent it, you wreak it.
You see, regulation is _hard_. It's hard because everytime you write a regulation there's a thousand yahoos lookin' for a loop hole. It's like the monkeys and Shakespeare, get enough of 'em and and sooner or later they'll pull it off. So you get crap like "No drones for commercial use" because it's the only reliable way to regulate them, and regulating them is good for the mentioned wreaked car reasons.
As for GE, for Pete's sake's people stop electing far right ass hats. Then we can go back to a 90% top tier tax rate. Yeah, you balk now, but if we try taking 90% by the time they're done with the loopholes we might get 5%...
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The passengers aren't _doing_ anything. You don't need a license to sit in a chair for 8 hours. Skydivers don't jump out of planes in the middle of a city. When they do (for stunts and such) they generally have to get a permit. The FAA isn't being a dick, they're regulating a flying object that if it fell from the sky might kill somebody. This isn't rocket science, heck we regulate those for the same damn reasons. Do you not know what Terminal Velocity is? Haven't you heard the bit about the penny dropped from the Empire State Building. You know, regulators aren't all just jerks with sticks up their butt lookin' to ruin your fun. There's a reason you're not suppose to dive in shallow water. Lord, the stuff that gets modded up on /. these days...
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
The term Third World arose during the Cold War to define countries that remained non-aligned with either NATO, or the Communist Bloc. -wikipedia.
Doom and gloom without a decent rational just a pitch fork. You guys don't even understand the terms you are using.
I've got a drone video (shot at BurningMan before the anti-drone restrictions) that has over 700,000 views. Being it's from BurningMan I did not monetize it. However, I did patch in music I liked and "acknowledged third party content" once YouTube's systems identified it. The copyright owner on the music caused ads to appear. I don't see a cent of it, and the 'monetize' checkbox is turned off on that video.
Still, I gotta wonder if now I'm going to get an FAA letter too, as they'll see a high-viewer-count "drone video" with ads on it.
(edit: the link to the vid: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... )
There are too many comparisons between a person flying a single drone for recreational use and another person flying a single drone for commercial use. That is not the problem. The real problem is the difference between a few people flying a few drones for a couple of hours a week and a number of companies flying hundreds of drones for many more hours each day of the week. The expected number of accidents for commercial drones is much higher than for recreational drones. The skies can handle a few unregulated drones. Add a few hundred commercial drones to the same space and there will be collisions, crashes and injuries. Had the FAA allowed free use of commercial drones they would be the first agency blamed when someone got hurt.
Think of the commercial interests who might want to use drones;
1. Deliveries; food, medications, small package, etc.
2. News agencies
3. Paparazzi
4. Remote tourism
There are many other commercial uses of drones. The difference between recreational and commercial drone use is numbers. Just look at the issue with paparazzi. Do you really want 30 or 40 drones flown by inexperienced people hovering close to crowds hoping to get a good photograph? Do you really want hundreds of drones delivering packages in urban areas?
The FAA has yet to work out how to license commercial use so they can control congestion and flight rules. They also need rules to be able to identify the owner of drones when something goes wrong. These problems are being looked into but the solutions are not as simple as some people seem to believe. Some of the simple problems have been worked out but all the issues need to be worked out before large numbers of drones can be licensed.
I'm getting a drone ad on my slashdot page. Perhaps slashdot is guilty of commercial use of drones.
Yes I agree. Though really it's a toy quadrocopter. It also has the ability for for remote control flight outside of line of site from pilot. Oh and can be programmed to be fully autonomous too.
Now let's flip through the dictionary. Ahhh found it. The word that describes this is a DRONE!
Just because it costs $1000 instead of $100000 doesn't make it any less of a drone. There's no published dictionary where this device wouldn't be considered a drone. None of those definitions take into account the cost of the drone. Many dictionaries also consider far less capable devices drones.
So you're right, let's get the conversation on track and stop forcing your incorrect view of the English language on everyone else.
You can say what you want, the First Amendment has you covered there. But you conduct commerce at the pleasure of your local, state and federal government.
The 1st Amendment does not grant you unlimited rights to fly aircraft or conduct commerce. You get to choose to lose your license, or agree to cease certain types of commerce, even if that commerce seems to be speech. It's the license that is the issue here, and the courts have ruled numerous times that limits can be placed. The choice is yours, fly the FAA way or don't fly at all.
Either way, your right to complain about how the FAA does things is protected speech. That's how the First Amendment works.
A word must be invented for the (usually public, but private is not unthinkable) official who, out of the blue, as if he did not have anything better to do, decides to come up with a new interpretation of regulations in order to spoil the fun of some innocent poor bastard.
Also perhaps we need a word for the official who then proceeds to enforce this new interpretation, with tenaciousness never seen before by him, or by anyone else in his entire department, in the handling of actual issues.
This guide is definitive. Reality is frequently inacurate. (from THHGTTG)
Thank god the drone didn't record the movie that the neighbor was watching in his yard and the music the teens were listening to or jailtime would have been mandatory.
It's not unmanned, there's a guy with a remote control.
This is a great example of a government agency overstepping their bounds and by threat of death, he must stop.
Dont think its s threat of death? OK, he keeps flying, cops come to HIS house to "talk" to him, he refuses to talk about his playtime with his toy. The cops escalate to physical force to get compliance out of the "evil perp". He defends himself from the unlawful aggression and is shot in the process. This could happen.
Every law has the threat of a cage or death behind it, refuse to comply with the guy taking you to a cage and you will die.
We need to modernize our system, i don't need someone to represent my will, with the available technology, I can represent myself. I find it hard to believe the pinnacle of modern governance was created 200 years ago and nothing better can ever happen.
because there is an ad placed on a web page which re-printed this story, the story needs to be taken down from all internet sites and all print media - because it is commercial profiteering from said story. Every day your 'rights' which were given to you by people, are taken away by those very same people. In reality, you have no rights - never did.
Aircraft privately operated, private pilot.
case a) carrying a photographer, who takes picture, and sells them (photographer is not paying pilot more than legally possible; probably 50/50 split cost of operating the plane in most countries?)
case b) the pilot takes photos on his/her own. Sells them.
Which case is possible? In a) the commercial part is purely on the photographer. In case b), well the pilot is distracted from flying by taking photos.
Is carrying someone for the purpose of taking photos for commercial use automatically commercial? Then how to distinguish this from someone taking pictures for their own fun, and only deciding to sell them after the fact?
Back to the drones.
case a) camera is fixed mounted to the drone and operated by the drone operator.
case b) camera is operated on a different radio by someone else; who is not paying the drone operator
So in case a) pictures cannot be sold, can they be sold in case b)?
Protecting our freedoms and just generally staying out of the way, while lightly enforcing a small set of reasonable laws designed to limit how much economic and physical harm a malicious person could do to someone if they for some reason decided to. Yep! The future sure looks bright innovative, brave people of the United States! No innovation-stifling, bureaucracy-heavy, systematic regulation-as-indulgences-for-the-politically-connected here.
We had toy helicopters for years before we had drones. There's a huge difference as "drones" fly autonomously or semi-autonomously. If you've ever watched liveleak videos of drone use you'll note the thing flies itself, the operator works on targeting and killing people. The interface is extremely high level. The operator marks an area as the target and the software alters the flight path and camera angle to make that area available for attack.
A toy helicopter, on the other hand, is directly flown by the operator and generally has a rolling camera that simply aims straight ahead or is simply movable by the operator.
You can turn a toy helicopter into a drone with the right software, but they are otherwise *very* different things. Calling it a drone is done simply to invoke images of people flying actual drones over the middle east and therefore make it scary.
Hobbyists have been flying toy helicopters far longer than that without incident. Don't let the FAA shit in this punchbowl any more than they already have.
Do you have ESP?
There's a video on liveleak of someone being *killed* by one of those. I'm very familiar with them. See my other screed above explaining why the FAA is pushing the "drone" language.
Do you have ESP?
If a private pilot makes a flight under Instrument Flight Rules, a track of his flight appears on FlightAware.
FlightAware displays ads.
Discuss.
https://youtu.be/jixxYx9fklM
It gets fuzzy for people though - I have a Syma X5c, which is clearly a toy quadcopter, but it looks remarkably like a Phantom which I'd call a proper drone since it has GPS & self flying abilities. I jokingly refer to mine as a drone, and most people would probably assume it could fly itself.
How to display your nanniness and become the laughing stock of the world... .
There is and will not be a market to chance: theft, maliciousness/intentional grounding, collisions, etc.. for some stupid aerial video. One day the scared people with their pandering politicians will be protecting this technology, jeesh. For now, know keep grounded to reality; if the future is not scary, it is not the future. Note: Privacy invasion is already ignored in larger ways via stationary cameras and social identification practices.
He is crazy if you think about it; I am not.