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The Problem With Mandatory Drone Registration (roboticstrends.com)
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.
Except a lot of the drone issues aren't criminals. The issues are inexperienced citizens doing stupid things. Telling people they need to register, and possibly need to read a pamphlet or take a test gets a fair bit more information out into the public, and hopefully stops at least one science teacher from dropping a drone on a crowd at the US Open, or flying it around airports.
Cars and airplanes are big and expensive they're easy for gov't to control. You can't hide a Buick or Cessna in your backpack and stealth fly them.
Drones are too cheap and small. Mandatory registration and regulation probably isn't going to work well.
Most effective way to control idiots flying drones near airports would be to shoot them down. But currently we don't have a good technology to do this. Shooting at it with firearms or RF jamming are not good ideas due to collateral damage they cause.
I'm thinking some enterprising guys could make an anti-drone drone for this. You make a specialized drone that detects another drone flying, flies to it and attaches itself to the target via a net or cables and thus bring it down safely.
The problem isn't that the majority people doing illegal things with quadcopters aren't acting maliciously, but are acting in ignorance. It's just like licensing people to drive: it forces them to learn the rules of the road, so fewer people will be ignorant of them.
Rawr
The article is about drones.
Not about a $200 toy octo copter.
If you like to spend so much money for toys it might be helpful to grasp the problems and implications and ramifications of that 'technology'.
I for my part don't want anyone fly small crafts over my property ... chance is he kills a child, or destroys something and never will be able to pay the damage.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
My grandmother learned to drive before there were licenses (1930s, rural Tennessee) - her first car had no functioning brakes, if you came to an intersection and there was cross traffic: veer into the field and come around again, there weren't that many cars out there, she almost never had to circle around twice before proceeding.
They work well as revenue generation, they don't stop criminals from doing illegal things.
I have no idea how registration will even stop or hinder drones flying where they shouldn't. Put fear into people they will be found out if the drone crashes? Blast an ID wherever you go?
Nah, the tech is there to do virtual avoidance areas. Bad guys will ignore it, or registration, anyway.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.