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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!”
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?
simply posting the video to youtube does not in and of itself, generate income.
Allowing youtube to monetize the video, and their subsequent royalty payment, DOES generate income.
The legal grey territory, would be with Youtube making money from videos (used to bring in users, who then view youtube only ads) of people's drone use. Youtube would then be generating income from private drine use, making it commercial, but not to the drone operators.
The proper remedy here, is to make youtube and other video sites not be able to collect income from uploaded videos of drone flight.
Not to penalize the drone operators, who simply want to share videos of drone flight with other enthusiasts, without a profit motive.
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.
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 regulations affecting commercial flights are meant to keep people safe from disasters; not to stop people from posting footage. What about all the skydivers who do the same thing? What about passengers on commercial flights? They don't have a license; the airline or pilot does. This is just governance without a shred of common sense. That or someone at the FAA felt like being a dick and didn't expect articles about it.
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.
The drone operator / video poster WAS actually earning money from the ads, even though it was a tiny amount. Generally speaking, in terms of business rules and regulations, there are a lot of exceptions made for people who make under a specific monetary threshold. I'd like to see the FAA formalize this, so that anyone who makes less than, for example, $1000 a year isn't considered "commercial use". If it later becomes a problem, then address those specific problems at that time.
If the drone were flying a banner, I think that would constitute an advertisement, and it would likely be subject to regulation as well.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
In both cases, the activity is licensed. The pilot is responsible for the behavior of passengers (hence the laws against interfering with flight crews and their strict enforcement), as are drop pilots:
-FAA
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
The government doesn't want you to make money, especially if you do so in a new and innovative way. THAT, my friend, is the problem.
That is not really what is going on. This is a simple case of regulatory capture. The FAA is staffed by pilots, whose friends are pilots, and they regulate pilots. All of these pilots see commercial use of drones as a threat to their livelihood. So rather than doing what is in the best interest of the American people, the FAA is pushing the agenda of the people and organizations they are supposed to be regulating. Regulations on drone use should be based on weight, altitude, location, method of control, payload, etc., not some stupid commercial/hobbyist distinction.
The regulations affecting commercial flights are meant to keep people safe from disasters
How does banning the use of drones in disaster recovery help keep people safe from disasters? The FAA is running a racket to protect pilots of manned aircraft from competition. This has nothing to do with safety.
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?
a lot of youtube accounts are set up for revenue sharing from ads. he is most likely making money
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
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
The government doesn't want you to make money, especially if you do so in a new and innovative way. THAT, my friend, is the problem.
That is not really what is going on. This is a simple case of regulatory capture.
It's not really that simple, and the grandparent's position is not without merit.
You'll note that *amateurs* are not allowed to operate drones commercially, and *commoners* are not allowed to start a business operating drones (for remote crop/herd inspection, search and rescue, real estate videos), but big players such as Amazon and FedEx will be granted commercial licenses to do so.
It's the same with any business in the US: the big, entrenched businesses are given all the exceptions, all the subsidies, and all the tax breaks in the name of "jobs", while making it impossible for new companies to form and hire grow. As a concrete example, it is impossible to start a company (however small) to compete against GE because GE pays no taxes.
It's a stupid policy that's indirectly driving the economy of the country into the ground. Big, entrenched companies don't hire more people when given money, *small* businesses hire people when they grow to become big ones. Propping up a big, weak company at the expense of stifling smaller companies is the source of much stagnation in this country.
We have an opportunity to make great progress in an emerging technology, and by holding the US back all the advances will be made in other economic climates.
Look for the US to become a third-world nation in the next decade or so.
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.
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.
He's making money
Is he? TFS says he is posting the results of a hobby. YouTube is adding the adverts (and making the money for its parent company).
Hanes needs to contact the FAA and have them send the cease and desist letter to Google corporate.
Have gnu, will travel.
The problem is you're missing the whole point of the fine article, and of what the FAA is doing. Picture two people standing next to each other, each one at the controls of a 4-pound DJI Phantom with a GoPro hanging off of it. They're both using exactly the same equipment, practicing exactly the same safety protocols, and each flying 35 feet off the ground over the roof of a house, pointing their cameras at the gutters, looking for debris that might make it worth the risk of putting up a ladder for cleaning. You're watching this, and you have no way of knowing which of two operators is doing it for fun, and which is doing it for $20.
Which of the two people do you think should be fined $10,000?
Can you tell by what they're doing, how they're operating, what the video looks like, or anything else? No. You have to look for the outline of that $20 bill in the one operator's pocket. The FAA considers the guy flying for fun to be operating completely within their guidelines. The indistinguishable guy standing right next to him doing exactly the same thing now owes the FAA a $10,000 fine. The FAA says they will not be asking the one guy to pass any sort of test in order to spool up that quadcopter and fly over those gutters. They guy standing next to him will need to invest many hours and hundreds of dollars in order to make exactly the same flight with exactly the same equipment under exactly the same circumstances. Because there's enough cash to buy a pizza in his pocket.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
As a private, non-commercial pilot, you're allowed to share expenses with your passenger(s). He should argue that they go pound sand.
And basejumping is quite often isn't legal, especially in places where it might endanger people below. What's your point?
It's low hanging fruit to get a new source of (penalty/fine) revenue, going after Youtube uploaders. Meanwhile, people like my friend operate a nice $$$ weekend business doing drone-based aerial photography (he tells me it's not all surveying; maybe it's voyeurism, who knows, but one thing's for sure -- the FAA has not and will never hear of him).
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.'"
The difference is this - to be "commercial" there has to be the intention and expectation of *making a profit* from your activities.
Intention is sufficient. One does not have to successful nor even expect to be successful for it to be commercial.
If the suggestion that he has made less than 1 dollar from this is true, then he is *not* in any reasonable sense a commercial drone operator.
Then I guess film production companies are a charity since they usually lose money; at least as far as the accounting is concerned.
I agree, when push comes to shove this guy is NOT a problem, and not what the FAA should be going after but they didn't single him out.
Someone *complained*, and they are required to follow up, and it *is* commercial activity... so here we are...
Did they throw the book at him? No. They warned him that he'd have to stop. I don't publish to youtube... can he not opt out of posting his videos with affiliate advertising?? If so... done.
Its not even newsworthy.
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%...
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
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.
Most cities at have at most less than 10 new helicopters. A new agency has to be pretty big to be able to afford a helicopter. Also helicopters have flight crews on board who are highly trained will avoid collisions at all costs. Helicopter pilots have a vested interest in not colliding as they may die. They have worked out protocols on dealing with big news stories and very few collisions occur. I had to go back to 2007 to find the last one. In the last 40 yeas there have been 43 accidents involving news helicopters gathering news. Of that, only three were mid air collisions. Considering the number of news helicopters around the world that is a very good safety record.
Compare that with the number of news agencies, magazines, bloggers, etc that can afford a drone. Take the Academy Awards red carpet event as an example. Do you really think it is safe to have a few hundred drones remotely flown by untrained pilots hovering over the crowd jockeying for position to get the best shot? So what if one drone bumps another one and causes a crash? The pilot who caused the crash is fine even though someone on the ground may be injured. It would even be dificult to prove who caused the accident. Drone pilots have no personal incentive to avoid crashes.
Sorry but helicopters vs drones is not a valid comparison.
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.