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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.
I think you want to refer to the Commerce Clause. And, the action is not agains "speech" per se, but against the commercial use of drones. The FAA won't bother him about advertising revenue from non-drone videos, or about using drones as a hobby. It's when he combines the two that it becomes a commercial activity (and yes, earning advertising revenue via Youtube is Interstate Commerce).
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
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
simply posting the video to youtube does not in and of itself, generate income.
Yes, but he is a registered ad affiliate of Youtube. In other words, he has given his name, his mailing address, and his social security number in the hope of one day, having enough subscribers and viewers to receive an actual check through the mail.
From his own attorney:
Hanes told me that his videos are technically "monetized" on YouTube but that he has never received a payment from Google and the revenue he's technically earned from Google’s ads is less than a dollar.
Granted, the number of video views hasn't met the minimum threshold to be cut an actual check yet, but his intent is there. And the fact that he hasn't cancelled his affiliate status with Youtube yet, which would solve the entire problem in one swoop without needing to delete his existing channel, just means that he's hoping to generate enough page views through an artificially created controversy.
There are a number of Youtube videos of people flying hobby drones well above 10,000 feet. Above 10,000, several safety measures go out of effect - airline passengers can remove their seat belts, airliners can exceed 250 knots, etc - so a hobby drone at 10,001 feet is much more dangerous than a drone at 9,999. Above 18,000, all flights must be conducted under IFR and pilots are no longer required to see and avoid - so they stop looking out the window and get busy with other tasks. So a hobby drone at 18,001 feet is yet more dangerous still, as well as being a whole new level of illegal.
You can bet your bottom dollar that hobby drone operators know none of this.
The FAA, for very good common-sense safety reasons, wants like hell to put a stop to this. However, Congress legislated away the FAA's power to actually regulate or provide standards for hobby drones. The FAA can't say "don't fly them above 10,000 feet" because they are now prohibited by the FAA Modernization and Reform Act of 2012 from *any* rulemaking regarding model aircraft. And according to the Act, the model aircraft can be *up to 55 pounds* - and it seems like FAA concepts like "controlled airspace" don't apply. The only requirement is that if you are going to fly within 5 miles of an airport, the operator has to provide prior notice - *not ask permission* - from the airport's air traffic control.
During the period 1958-2012, the FAA was solely responsible for aviation safety and airspace regulation, and maintained a profoundly excellent safety record. From 2012, there are now two agencies responsible for air safety - the FAA for manned aircraft, and vaguely-defined "community-based set of safety guidelines" for recreational drones in the same airspace. Common sense says that this can't, and won't, work - so basically, Congress has decided that we will wait until a drone takes down an airliner, then over-react and probably outlaw all hobby drones everywhere. And probably blame the FAA.
This is what passes for policy-making in the US today. It's really very sad.
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.'"
FTA : "Hanes told me that his videos are technically "monetized" on YouTube"
So he has told YouTube to generate revenue for him from his videos, which is very different from Google generating revenue for themselves from their own platform. Facebook wont give you money for posting pictures.
So technically he is using his drone sourced footage commercially.
Youtubers with popular videos get an offer from google to "monetize" the videos. If they accept, google inserts ads into your video, and pays them some of what they earn from advertisers". If you don't do this then there will normally be no ads in your youtube videos (though there may be ads elsewhere on the page, I guess - I use adblocking, so I'm not sure).
So a standard youtube video is non-commercial, since the person who created and/or uploaded the video gets no compensation for doing so. A subset of "monetized" videos are commercial because of the income from the inserted ads. I can see the FAA being against the latter kind of youtube drone video, but not the former kind.