Slashdot Mirror
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.
That's because its actively enforced on public roads
Where are the sky police?
They work well as revenue generation, they don't stop criminals from doing illegal things.
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.
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.
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.
Do you really think that if you were to ram someone's car the police wouldn't show up at your door?
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
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.
PHEH!
This is obviously a case for robots.txt
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
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
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
I agree with you- where I live they want you to buy registration stickers for off road vehicles, but enforcement is spotty to nonexistent at best. When you throw in the confusion over what is private/public land etc (I am in the Southwest) it get's really dicey. Checking drone registration is going to be at the very bottom of LE's list.
love is just extroverted narcissism
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...
The BATFE (amongst others) would disagree.
You can find low quality suppressors (or just adapters for a oil can) for about that price... then you get to pay an additional $200 tax to them and wait 9 months for them to process your transfer paperwork. Only after you receive the tax stamp back can you take possession of what you've technically owned all of that time.
Help Brendan pay off his student loans
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!
If it doesn't provide a "valuable solution" to a known problem, then why do it? It would just be an additional governmental expense that in the end is only useful to the government workers it employs and the identity thieves that will eventually gain access to the registration database.
Governments seek new things to control the same way that corporations seek new markets. It's just a different currency.
Reductio ad Absurdum
Good-bye
without the information on what is being passed, its fair to believe they might be including toy quad copters (being that they are the items that are always being cited for causing trouble )
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
Or at least the vast majority of people flying quadcopters aren't getting caught flying them illegally, and it's really easy to fall astray of the existing FAA regulations. Did you know it's illegal to fly over crowds? Or within a certain range of airports? Or during a number of events where the FAA may institute temporary no-fly zones? Or flying over 200ft AGL? Or for commercial purposes (unless for every quadcopter you operate you register for a special, expensive, exemption with the FAA that requires filing a very detailed disaster recovery plan, and registering for a tail number and operation requires the presence of two people, one of which must be holding an active pilot's license with the FAA, and the copter may never leave your line of sight)? Or that "commercial" use includes posting to YouTube as they monetize their videos (even if you're not)? I think there's a fairly sizeable number of people who may have unintentionally violated on of those, or other, rules about unlicensed aircraft operation.
You mean like how nobody bothers to look at the driver's manual their first time ever taking a drivers' license exam? They just say "screw it," and drive unlicensed? You think the majority of American motorists are driving that way?
Rawr
Nothings stops someone from buying a kit-airplane and taking off. As long as you stay out of controlled airspace, or airspace where you'd need a transponder, the FAA won't even have you on their radar (pun intended).
I'm not a complete idiot... Some parts are missing.
I agree with the folks that say licenses are not the answer. My dog is licensed, and he STILL can't drive well at all. I told him "The speed limit in school zones is 15 mph", but it's like he doesn't even listen. I'll tell you the truth, I really don't like riding with him much at all. I don't think he could control a drone any better than he can drive a car. What did getting him the license solve? Nothing!
Everything you know is wrong, Just forget the words and sing along.
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.
"Where are the sky police?"
Sounds almost like a Frank Zappa song.
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.
It exposes the logical fallacy. It CAN be used as a viable tack, this is not one of those times.
Good-bye
all im saying is give us real information on what they are doing.
stop passing laws without public input, and without reading the bills
give us a public debate time to discuss our thoughts on bills before they get passed. we dont need anymore BS laws
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
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.
AFAIK, there isn't gonna be any licence to fly a drone, so why would people read and *understand* whatever regs ? It's a drone, they bought it at Best Buy on sale, they don't care about regs...
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?
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
o/` what would you do when your ex-wife comes hooooome?
and she looks through your windows
and so does her drone...
WHO ARE THE SKY POLICE o/`
FAR Part 103.7: Certification and registration.
(a) Notwithstanding any other section pertaining to certification of
aircraft or their parts or equipment, ultralight vehicles and their
component parts and equipment are not required to meet the airworthiness
certification standards specified for aircraft or to have certificates
of airworthiness.
(b) Notwithstanding any other section pertaining to airman certification,
operators of ultralight vehicles are not required to meet any aeronautical
knowledge, age, or experience requirements to operate those vehicles or to
have airman or medical certificates.
(c) Notwithstanding any other section pertaining to registration and
marking of aircraft, ultralight vehicles are not required to be registered
or to bear markings of any type.
That's right, we need more laws! Will another 120000pages do, or isn't that enough? Is there any limit to how many laws we should have?
Did you know there's a law against trespassing? Why not simply define one's property to be some number of meters above, say 50, and be done with it? Then we don't need another law to be interpreted in ways never intended to bust people for all the wrong reasons. We can just use the existing laws.
Do you know what "generalization" means???
BTW, no one really can "look" into your windows, rather, you radiate light waves out of them. If you don't want people collecting those light waves, close your fucking curtains or blinds!
And do you really believe that laws to protect people from spying, by government, will be enforced? Who is going to enforce them, the government? See any problem with that?
At this point, we lack institutions to enforce law on the government. Many laws to protect citizens are written in such a way that there is no penalty for government entities breaking them anyway. And even when there are penalties, it's much more difficult to initiate an indictment vs. if you break a law. We need some radically different mechanism to handle this, such as having a citizen owned bank clear all the tax payments to .gov. Then have standing grand juries which can be petitioned by citizens to investigate alleged crimes by .gov agents. If a prosecutor then fails to prosecute an indictment brought by the grand jury, the jury can instruct the bank to pull the plug on funding that entire branch of .gov. Just shut the fucking thing down. Gone. Ie., there must be mechanisms for the citizenry to peacefully de-legitimize and dissolve the .gov at various levels for failure to abide by the law.
Most people don't have the wherewithall to 3D print a car.
A drone? Sure, you need some motors and rotors and control hardware/software. But the actual body of a drone? Not hard at all.
And 3D printed drones are, effectively, untraceable.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!