March 17, 2015 7:08 AM

These are definitely not the drones you're looking for

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….. “This office has received a complaint regarding your use of an unmanned aerial vehicle (aka drone) for commercial purposes referencing your video on the website youtube.com as evidence,” the letter reads. “After a review of your website, it does appear that the complaint is valid.”

One of the (many) things government fails at in spectacular fashion is keeping abreast of technology and the issues raised by new and ever-expanding types of wizardry. The argument over net neutrality is but one example, as are government attempts at regulating the Internet in any shape, manner, or form. Issues raised by modern technology is in many cases still addressed (poorly) by laws propagated when people still used AOL and had GeoCities pages.

Few instances have demonstrated the futility and inability of government attempts to keep up with technology that the explosion of drones. Time was when “drone” meant an unpiloted, remotely-guided missile used to destroy evildoers and their villages halfway around the world. Now the term has come to encompass a dizzying array of personal flying cameras, some capable of producing amazing high quality video unlike anything ever seen before.

Like any new technology, drones can be used for good (monitoring traffic, documenting construction, personal entertainment/movie making) or not so good (hovering outside bedrooms as electronic peeping toms, corporate espionage). There have been a hodgepodge of various responses from government entities ranging from the sublime to the ridiculous. One state made it illegal to obtain photographs via a drone that could not be obtained by other legal means. Perhaps this was meant to keep someone from hovering their drone outside the window of their neighbor’s hot teenage daughter hoping to catch her and her boyfriend in flagrante delicto. Left unsaid was how this law would be enforced and who would be deciding what pictures were obtained legally.

Now the FAA has stepped in and decreed that, if you post drone photos on YouTube, you’re considered to be using a drone for commercial puposes. Pilots engaged in what the FAA defines as “commerce” are subject to much stricter regulations and more substantial fines and penalties.

The hobby use of drones and other model aircraft has never been regulated by the FAA, but the agency has been adamant about making a distinction between hobby and commercial use, which has led to much confusion over the last couple years.

Where, exactly, does commercial use begin and hobby use end, for instance? If you fly for fun, but happen to sell your footage later, were you flying for a “commercial purpose?” What if you give it to a news organization that runs it on a television station that has ads on it? What if you upload it to YouTube and Google happens to put an ad on it? What if you decide to put an ad on it?

The question of where “hobby use” ends and “commercial use” begins is the crux of the problem. Since there’s no law that specifically addresses this scenario, enforcement of such laws and regulations that do exist are left up to the personal interpretations of FAA field officers.

I have a friend whose newest toy is a $1500 drone that’s capable of capturing some truly breathtaking video. He used it to document his daughter’s wedding in Hawaii last year, and it was a wedding video unlike any I’ve ever seen. I’ve seen a video of footage taken by a drone flying over Auschwitz. It was a haunting documentation of one of the places on Earth where the worst of humanity was allowed free reign…and that to me is EXACTLY what a drone should be used for. In neither case were the pursuits commercial, but if they were to be posted to YouTube, they might well be considered “commercial.”

The FAA’s letter was a typically governmental response- attempt to stomp on something and shut it down because it’s misunderstood and therefore considered a threat…to someone or something. The reality is that the use of drones will increase exponentially as they become more affordable and easier to operate. Unless Congress and the FAA get ahead of the game (something neither institution is built to do), there will be a chaotic web of laws and regulations, many contradictory, most ineffective, and almost all overly broad. Innovation and recreation will be stifled because bureaucrats are frightened and don’t understand what’s happening.

This isn’t to say that regulation isn’t necessary or warranted…but shouldn’t common sense be part of the equation?

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This page contains a single entry by Jack Cluth published on March 17, 2015 7:08 AM.

Republican evil and racism: Same as it ever was was the previous entry in this blog.

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