FAA Drone Rules May Already Be Outlawed By Congress (hackaday.com)

Posted by samzenpus on Monday December 21, 2015 @06:55AM from the stopped-before-they-ever-began dept.

szczys writes: New FAA rules about drone registration and operation are now in effect. So far the talk has centered around registering your aircraft, and about the weight restriction. But all of this may be moot since the US Congress made a law in 2012 prohibiting these types of rules: "The Administrator of the Federal Aviation Administration may not promulgate any rule or regulation regarding a model aircraft, or an aircraft being developed as a model aircraft." Even if the rules hold up under this law, it is not all doom and gloom for drones. The FAA rules could have been much more stringent, and in general they do make sense. Brian Benchoff walks through the regulation, comparing the new rules to the FAA's existing pilot rules, and juxtaposing the threat drones make to full-size aircraft in flight with those risks associated with bird strikes.

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The _massive_ flaw in these regulations... by Anonymous Coward · 2015-12-21 07:10 · Score: 5, Interesting

If the FAA model aircraft database is public, then what's to stop someone local from looking up your name, address and registration number and sticking that on their model aircraft instead of their own name ?
That way, they can fly in a reckless manner and if their aircraft crashes, it's an innocent person the authorities are going to be looking for.