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The Problem With Mandatory Drone Registration (roboticstrends.com)

Posted by samzenpus on from the poking-holes dept.

An anonymous reader writes: Drone lawyer and commercial pilot Jonathan Rupprecht believes any drone registration plan is a necessary first step, but he's also doubtful that registering drones will be a valuable solution. "Who is going to regulate this? Point-of-sale? Wal-Mart? Best Buy?" he asked. "What if I'm ordering parts off the Internet and put them together? That's what the gun industry does." A registration number, he said, could quickly be lost if a drone is bought and sold multiple times. Rupprecht believes geofencing will produce far better results by preventing problems as opposed to trying to figure out who is responsible after something has happened.

17 of 223 comments (clear)

  1. License Plates and registrations ... by angel'o'sphere · · Score: 1, Insightful

    ... seem to work for cars and air planes quite well.

    --
    Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
    1. Re:License Plates and registrations ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      That's because its actively enforced on public roads

      Where are the sky police?

    2. Re: License Plates and registrations ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      They work well as revenue generation, they don't stop criminals from doing illegal things.

    3. Re: License Plates and registrations ... by Kichigai+Mentat · · Score: 5, Insightful
      It's not supposed to stop criminals from doing illegal things. It's supposed to make sure the vast majority of people flying quadcopters don't unintentionally do something illegal by forcing them to read the relevant regulations, and provide a way to hold people accountable if they do not act legally.

      Just like drivers and vehicle licences. Those regulations don't stop people from operating a vehicle illegally, but it does provide a system to punish people who do.

      --
      Rawr
    4. Re:License Plates and registrations ... by ganjadude · · Score: 2, Insightful

      if im spending 200 bucks on a toy, I shouldnt need to jump through hoops.

      what next, registration and insurance on 3d printers? you know, just to protect you of course....

      --
      have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
    5. Re: License Plates and registrations ... by x0ra · · Score: 4, Insightful

      The vast majority of people flying quadcopters don't already do illegal stuff. Nobody is gonna read regulations, it's just gonna be more paperwork nobody give a shit about...

    6. Re: License Plates and registrations ... by Tailhook · · Score: 5, Insightful

      they don't stop criminals

      You're right; criminals will do as they will and they won't hesitate to file a number off their drones any more than they do their guns.

      However, I have noted that the headlines involving drones are frequently not hardened criminals attempting to facilitate some criminal enterprise. They're knucklehead schoolteachers, government bureaucrats and doctors at the US Open or some football game trying to video the events and post it on facetoob or whatever.

      When pulled up on their recklessness they plead ignorance and seem to have trouble understanding why they shouldn't be permitted to fly their toy over a huge crowd of people. The former part of that is an act to weasel out of consequences. The later part will be mitigated to some degree by making it clear to these entitled assholes that their names on file.

      If that cuts the frequency of headlines about idiots using their excessive disposable income to interfere with air tankers around forest fires then great.

      --
      Maw! Fire up the karma burner!
    7. Re: License Plates and registrations ... by spire3661 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Reductio ad Absurdum

      --
      Good-bye
    8. Re:License Plates and registrations ... by tripleevenfall · · Score: 2, Insightful

      We need new regulations for drones, because they've changed the game in terms of privacy.

      We need laws to protect people from spying, both by private parties and government entities, via drones.

      We need laws that say you can't just fly a drone over someone else's property and follow them around, or look in their windows, or whatever. We need regulations to define reasonable expectation of privacy directly to drones.

      IMO, we need to have some ability for people to defend themselves from these things as well, whether it's jamming them, shooting them down on your property, whatever.

    9. Re:License Plates and registrations ... by ScentCone · · Score: 3, Insightful

      We need new regulations for drones, because they've changed the game in terms of privacy.

      As the FAA has said over, and over, and over again - they are not the venue for privacy matters. That's not an issue for which they have any sort of statutory authority. Period.

      Happily, every state and county and city in the country has existing laws that address deliberate invasions of privacy. The fact that you're unaware of where into the legal and regulatory framework such matters fall means that your entire perspective on this is coming from ignorance.

      We need laws to protect people from spying, both by private parties and government entities, via drones.

      You mean like the existing laws we have that address espionage? What do you mean by "spying," and how does your definition differ from all of the laws we already have that address deliberate eavesdropping, trespassing, etc? Be specific.

      We need laws that say you can't just fly a drone over someone else's property

      If it's low enough, we have existing laws about trespassing. If it's high enough, you have no expectation of privacy or any control over what flies over your house. Or are you of the opinion that you can call air traffic control and demand that airplanes not be allowed to fly over you?

      look in their windows

      We have abundant laws that already address when this is acceptable (say, from the street) and when it's not. Should we have separate laws that address when it's done with a telescope vs. binoculars? No? Right.

      We need regulations to define reasonable expectation of privacy directly to drones.

      And hot air balloons. And model rockets. And balsa wood rubber-band-powered models with pen cameras on them. And 1000mm Canon lenses. And people with good eyesight. Or... we could simply rely on the laws we already have which address that just fine.

      we need to have some ability for people to defend themselves from these things

      You already have the right to defend yourself when you're being attacked, at least in most places. Are you concerned about someone hunting you down with an armed remote control airplane? Are you even listening to yourself? We already have laws that make that illegal. It's already illegal for any aircraft (with very, very few exceptions, like police SWAT operations) to release (let alone shoot) anything from any type of aircraft, period. But you want additional, redundant laws that say exactly the same thing? Why?

      --
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  2. Difference? by Archangel+Michael · · Score: 3, Insightful

    What is the difference between "bad guy does illegal stuff" and "bad guy does illegal stuff with drone"?

    Nothing. Doing illegal stuff is already against the law. This is right up there with ... "on the internet" style patents IMHO.

    --
    Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
    1. Re: Difference? by OhPlz · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Yet we don't have a bicycle license or regulation scheme (in most places). We don't have skiing licenses or regulation. There are far more dangerous things that people do than fly little drones. It's a free country. Rather than regulate every bad idea a person can have (which is infinite), use the laws we have and punish some to serve as warnings for the others.

    2. Re: Difference? by OhPlz · · Score: 4, Insightful

      That drone isn't doing anything to the plane that a large bird can't. IMO, that's a design flaw of the plane. Worse, if that's really such a risk, it's an obvious way for a terrorist to bring down an airliner. They're not going to care about drone regulations.

      I get your point about bicycles and skis, but the flip side is that the airliner example is probably a one-in-a-million chance, whereas cycling and skis do routinely get both the operator and bystanders hurt or even killed. Yea, they're not going to take out more than two or three people at once, but the likelihood is far greater.

  3. This is a solution looking for a problem. by EmperorOfCanada · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Drones are interesting but beyond their scary name they are just the classic tool. Like knives, gasoline, matches, and leaf blowers there are the vast majority of people who will do good with them and a tiny few who will do bad things.

    Fertilizer monitoring probably is a good thing as a single bad person can do a tremendous amount of damage. But right now a drone is going to give someone a bad cut or maybe take out an eye.

    What I do smell is the government getting really pissed off that drones are being used to inform. That is their worst nightmare. Drones monitoring police, or fire is not what they want. They love when they have an excuse to push the public back and exert their authority. They love when they can put armed patrols around a pollution site where some big donor has been given cart blanche to pollute their way to another billion dollars. They hate when a drone flies overhead and exposes the truth.

    As for drones interfering with flight operations, have you ever met a goose? If you are a pilot and your choices are to hit a goose or to hit a drone pretty much every pilot will chose the drone.

    But sadly various criminals are going to buy better and better drones and come up with better and better ways to use them. So drug deliveries, even armed robberies are coming.

    So this is going to be the classic war on drugs stupidity where they don't have any impact on the criminals while having a massive impact on the benefits that drones could provide the public.

    I also wonder if some of these regulations are coming from the really big aviation companies who have pretty much entirely missed out on the commercial drone market and they know that if they craft the regulations carefully enough they will shut out the innovations pouring out of small companies all over. This way it will end up only being large corporations selling to the police, the military, and other large corporations? This completely screws the little guy. But at what point has government taken the needs of the little guy into serious consideration in the last 50 years when it came up against huge corporations?

    This is giving me a headache. I had better take one of my cheap aspirin before the TPP allows Bayer to somehow renew their patent.

    1. Re:This is a solution looking for a problem. by jklovanc · · Score: 3, Insightful

      But right now a drone is going to give someone a bad cut or maybe take out an eye.

      Here are some much worse things done by remote controlled aircraft.
      Kill someone
      Interfered with fire fighting
      Interfered with police
      Invasion of privacy

      As for drones interfering with flight operations, have you ever met a goose? If you are a pilot and your choices are to hit a goose or to hit a drone pretty much every pilot will chose the drone.

      How many geese to you know that carry a lithium battery that can explode under the right circumstances? Geese are not within human control but drones are. We do what we can.

  4. Not going to fly (so to speak) by Forthan+Red · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I see this as being just as effective as the FCC requiring a license to use the GMRS walkie-talkies you can buy at Walmart - which is to say, not all.

  5. and register binoculars. and cameras. and eyes by raymorris · · Score: 5, Insightful

    You're so right. For the same reason, we need a federal licensing regime for owning binoculars. And cameras. And eyes.

    Come to think of it, we've already HAVE privacy laws. Because we already have eyes.