The Problem With Mandatory Drone Registration (roboticstrends.com) 223
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.
Difference? (Score:4, 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.
Re: Difference? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: Difference? (Score:4, 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.
Re: Difference? (Score:5, 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.
Re: Difference? (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
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They still act irresponsibly, that's the point. If a majority of motorists don't obey the rules, why would drone operators do so? There are traffic cops watching for motor vehicle violations, there aren't any sky cops. It would be mostly honor system, except perhaps over large populations or very sensitive areas. The idiots will see that and do whatever the hell they want and 99.99% of the time get away with it.
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"A lot legal systems in democratic societies include a concept called "Honest but mistaken belief" [...] Excuse all the negatives, but if the judge/jury has less than 51% certainty that a defendant did not have honest but mistaken belief that they were consented to do X then they cannot be found guilty of doing X."
Review your sources. On one hand, the 'in dubio pro reo' thingie is for criminal offenses, not civil, which are much more about who pays the broken dishes (i.e. culpa lata dolo aequiparatur). On
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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.
What's the difference between "bad guy does illegal stuff" and "bad guy does illegal stuff with gun"?
The difference is that having a (legal) gun of your own makes it much harder for said bad guys to victimize you. Most criminals are bullies who want easy marks. They don't want a gunfight.
Having your own drone won't make much of a difference against some bad guy (or moron) with a drone. Therefore the analogy doesn't hold.
This is a solution looking for a problem. (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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While I may agree with some of your post, What you smell is Airline Pilots Assoc. lobbying government to regulate them. Lets keep our eye on the ball here and not go off into the weeds shall we? CNN and FOX sensationalizing Airplane "close calls" Police complainging about drones "almost taking out" their choppers and again sensationalized by CNN/FOX et al and this is what you get. It has nothing with 'OMG the gubmint don't want the people to be informed by drones"
Actually there are not many governments who want the people to be properly informed by anyone. A tough-minded populace which understands how to think critically, deconstruct an argument, follow the money, and recognize propaganda tactics (aka "manufactured consent") is extremely undesirable to control freaks everywhere. The mindless drivel and selective reporting that comes from the government-friendly corporate media is what they like. A good sensational story about drones, or a huge phony debate about
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What you smell is Airline Pilots Assoc. lobbying government to regulate them.
I don't know about this, but if so it is perfectly understandable. I fly small airplanes and nearly crashed once when I collided with a turkey vulture while descending to land. This is a bird that weighs maybe five pounds and is relatively soft compared to the materials of which a drone is made and yet still caused thousands of dollars of damage to the wing and support strut. The most dangerous time for a GA aircraft is close to the ground, which is also the hardest situation to adjust to unexpected objects
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"Understandable" yes, but alas we're looking for "reasonable".
A five pound turkey is NOT "soft compared to the materials of which a drone is made", unless you think bone and muscle is softer than styrofoam and epoxy. Yes, there are small motor components made from aluminium and ceramics, similar to how birds have skulls made from hard bone, but you can cut the largest RC component (the lithium battery) with a butter knife, and carbon fibre tends to shatter.
The energy of a collision is proportional to mv^2.
Re:This is a solution looking for a problem. (Score:4, 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 [dailymail.co.uk]
Interfered with fire fighting [torontosun.com]
Interfered with police [fortune.com]
Invasion of privacy [bbc.com]
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.
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... a lithium battery that can explode under the right circumstances ...
Please, show me where I can see a LiPo exploding after it's been chopped into several million pieces in a fraction of a second and the pieces scattered.
I've seen LiPo's explode after a knife is stuck through it, and LiPo's explode after a hexacopter crash-landed and the battery broke away, but not before the carbon-fiber blade gashed the battery deeply. The commonality there was the battery remained intact after the incident. After going through a turbine, just how intact would the battery be?
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After going through a turbine, just how intact would the battery be?
How about impacting the engine of a light aircraft? Not all aircraft use jet turbines.
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>right now a drone is going to give someone a bad cut or maybe take out an eye
See, and I've always thought the Predator mounted hellfire missiles were overpriced for what they can do.
Not going to fly (so to speak) (Score:4, Insightful)
WHAT does the gun industry do? (Score:2)
"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."
What's what the gun industry does?
I don't see that quote on the linked article.
A drone sucked in a jet engine is going to be all over the place. (A) Are you going to require metal placards attached to the drone? Furthermore, it is easy to scratch off a serial number. (B) Is possession of a drone with a scratched off serial number going to become illegal?
(A) No. (B) Yes. That was easy!
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Private manufacture of non NFA restricted firearm is legal.
I may have misunderstood you, but it's entirely legal to make your own firearm at home.
That doesn't include machine guns, short-barreled rifles/shotguns, suppressors, and "destructive devices" (grenades, bombs, etc) but you can indeed make your own handguns and long guns (rifles) without any legal liability as long as you don't sell or transfer them to another person or entity.
My apologies if I misunderstood your comment.
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Geofencing is not the answer (Score:2)
There are plenty of "toy" grade quads out there with no GPS functionality whatsoever that you can get up to mischief with. The Syma X8, for example: It can carry a Go-Pro, and a range booster can push it out a distance. But no GPS at all.
Those machines with GPS functionality have the means to necessarily disable it. If I'm flying and lose GPS for whatever reason (solar flare, heavy clouds etc), I need to be able to regain control of the bird and bring it back, otherwise there is now an uncontrollable thi
Were there drone accidnets at all? (Score:2)
I read that shark attacks on humans are extremly rare, just about a dozen or less per year in the entire world. Could it be that a fear of drones is also a similar phatasm, but even less realistic?
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You're right. There has never been a manned/RC aircraft accident. Not in the 50 years of the hobby. When planes fall out of the sky, it's either because the pilot screws up and flies into a hill, or air traffic control messes up and crashes them into each other.
There have been a few reported "near misses" with things that might have been a "drone", or possibly a bird, or another plane, or perhaps Superman.
No-one is entirely sure, possibly because trying to reliably spot even the biggest feature-film-grade o
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Licenses aren't the answer, I have proof! (Score:5, Funny)
Geo-fencing? (Score:2)
How do you geo-fence something without any geo-position capability?
"drones" includes the balsa wood RC planes people were flying 30 years ago.
It also includes the $20 toys you buy from China.
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How do you geo-fence something without any geo-position capability?
Yes. As we can see, most of the people calling for LAWS TO CONTROL SCARY NEW STUFF have no idea of what they're talking about.
Which is why they're calling for LAWS TO CONTROL SCARY NEW STUFF in the first place.
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Except it isn't even scary new stuff
It's old stuff that has suddenly become cheaper, popular and mass produced.
If only common sense was a prerequisite for anybody with public influence.
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Sadly, this is the wisest thing I've read so far today.
I would say "I don't want to live on this planet anymore", except that a David Windestadl - style helium-assisted "drone" launch was probably my best chance to make orbit, and I doubt I'll be able to get that shit registered now.
"On your licence application, you wrote you intend to 'slip the surly bonds of earth and punch the face of god'. I'm afraid we don't have a category for that."
Drones are the dirt bikes & ATVs of the skies. (Score:2)
Driving innovation out of the U.S.-- (Score:2)
Who's next? Bureaucratic red tape and regulation can only hurt.
Keep the cork on the fork, buddy! (Score:2)
Transponders (Score:2)
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Yes, let's ban all home-built, or open source drones.
FOR THE CHILDREN!
Colony collapse disorder - SOLVED (Score:2)
The problem with mandatory drone registration is that queen bees will now have to spend their entire careers doing paperwork.
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That's because its actively enforced on public roads
Where are the sky police?
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"Where are the sky police?"
Sounds almost like a Frank Zappa song.
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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/`
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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.
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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, wh
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Are you under the impression that all drones are quadcopters with onboard cameras?
and register binoculars. and cameras. and eyes (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.
Re:License Plates and registrations ... (Score:4, 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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Yup, some asshat does something stupid so every body else has to suffer the consequences.
First it was guns, now it is RC aircraft. Give the feminist movement just a tad more power and they'll be wanting to register your dick, you know, because somebody was raped with one.
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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"
Re: License Plates and registrations ... (Score:3)
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
Re: License Plates and registrations ... (Score:2, Insightful)
They work well as revenue generation, they don't stop criminals from doing illegal things.
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Do you really think that if you were to ram someone's car the police wouldn't show up at your door?
Re: License Plates and registrations ... (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re: License Plates and registrations ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: License Plates and registrations ... (Score:5, Informative)
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?
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Re: License Plates and registrations ... (Score:2)
I think that is disputed. Most don't think, "muahaha, crime!!" but it is believed they do think, "Cool, let's do seemingly harmless thing" which happens to be illegal.
Re: License Plates and registrations ... (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.
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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.
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Re: License Plates and registrations ... (Score:5, Insightful)
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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 thinkin
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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.
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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.
If it's a relatively harmless activity that generates a lot of revenue for the state, they will vigorously enforce it. It will be analogous to exceeding the speed limit in a passenger vehicle.
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Well that's the issue- how much can they reasonably charge to register a 100$ drone? 10$? Enforcement and registration program cost will far exceed that. These programs DO NOT generate revenue.
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>Checking drone registration is going to be at the very bottom of LE's list.
Not if they get to confiscate toys when they're not registered properly.
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... and stealth fly them.
Stealth fly them?
A quad of any lifting capacity is as noisy as fuck... if I want to spy on someone a quad is last thing I'd use!
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I don't think that the FAA really wants to require registration of the $50 pocket size quadcopters that you can easily hide in a backpack. They want people to register the bigger drones that are capable of doing serious damage if they crash into an airplane or a crowd of people.
You can thank the morons who have been flying these near airports and over major sporting events for these new laws. We didn't have this problem with RC Airplane pilots, but it seems that the lower difficulty of flying a GPS guided d
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what next, registration and insurance on 3d printers? you know, just to protect you of course....
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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.
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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.
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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 )
The most commonly cited quad in these instances is a DJI Phantom 1/2/3... at around $1000 is hardly a toy.
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The most commonly cited quad in these instances is a DJI Phantom 1/2/3... at around $1000 is hardly a toy.
Uh, yes, it is. Though it's also getting big enough that you really shouldn't be flying it over people, or around airports.
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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
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All this droning about drones really does beg the question: what is a drone?
Is it anything bigger than 30cm in length?
Is it anything heavier than 1kg?
How about helium filled balloons with an RC fan and rudder on them?
Does it have to be autonomous capable, or do LOS only vehicles still count?
Does it have to fly?
What if it never flies above 400'?
What if it never flies above 50'?
How about "high jumping" ground robots?
There needs to be some sensible definition, and at the end of the day, the word "drone" is for
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Re:License Plates and registrations ... (Score:5, Funny)
This is obviously a case for robots.txt
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PHEH! This is obviously a case for robots.txt
My screen reader stuttered over that...
Did you mean robot sex?
'cause I'm thinking some tight-ass already started working on laws about that...
Great, now I'm stuck with the image of a octo-copter trying to fly with a sex toy ziptied to it!
Attention All Units:
Be on the lookout for a low flying drone that appears Very Happy to see you!
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Just look here ===========> add the line drones 0.0.0.0 to your HOSTS files immediately to prevent them from encroaching on your personal space.
YOUR drone guns cannot STOP the drones while my HOSTS file script plugin tool addon can prevent them from even getting near you.
CAN your DRONE laws stop drones as well as my DRONE HOSTS FILE?? I THINK NOT!!!!!
HOSTS FILES!!!
~APK
That's a good imitation. You got the psychotic capitalization and the single-minded lunacy just fine. The only shortcoming? You forgot to pat yourself on the back while declaring victory without actually proving anything.
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and the PS which contains the actual message.
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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.
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The point is that any law enforcement official at any state, city, county, parish or federally can spot drone use and than demand the ID.
The question or discretion of having or needing to make contact on public property is removed. If you have a drone its papers please time.
Been "near" a base, mil site, gov site, protected site, art work, private sector building, court building, jail, prison, city, town, road, crops, far
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I suspect the argument is also that a firearm tends to have a (labor intensive to search) paper trail well beyond when it leaves the factory, doubly so when some cities/states require registration (either regardless of where purchased or when purchased from an FFL).
The problem though is the same: So long as a legal market exists for transfers that do not involve/require additional registration, you will have quite a few guns/drones, and even when those legal markets do not exist or are not practiced (ie Chi
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And, that is the big hole in gun laws. You can buy every part but that one. You only need to find a single part without registering so the process is too brittle. Like guns, drones need to have all of the important parts controlled.
Most parts of a rifle can be made from a shovel. No joke - there's a great photo blog on making an AK-47 from a shovel. The barrel must be hardened steel, but that's very low tech and people would start mach(lower receiver) was chosen wisely: it's where most of the complexity goes.
And even then, machining one with a CnC mill just isn't that hard.
Anyhow, little purpose is served in registering guns in the first place, unless your agenda is to seize them all somewhere down the road (which is, of course the
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That's odd - bit of my post vanished. Let's try again.
And, that is the big hole in gun laws. You can buy every part but that one. You only need to find a single part without registering so the process is too brittle. Like guns, drones need to have all of the important parts controlled.
Most parts of a rifle can be made from a shovel. No joke - there's a great photo blog on making an AK-47 from a shovel. The barrel must be hardened steel, but that's very low tech and people would start machining them if needed. The part that's registered (lower receiver) was chosen wisely: it's where most of the complexity goes.
And even then, machining one with a CnC mill just isn't that hard.
Anyhow, little purpose is served in registering guns in t
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Well, they have been working on this for three years [flyingmag.com]
and they've already blown past their deadline [vice.com].
You're not the reason this is happening, and you're not the people they're targeting. The majority of your old-school R
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You're not the reason this is happening, and you're not the people they're targeting. The majority of your old-school RC pilots are the ones who pay attention to the Academy of Model Aeronautics guidelines and whatnot, and generally know how not to be an idiot when flying. What the FAA is worried about is daddy dropping $60 for a Syma X5C to buy for junior's sixteenth birthday, and then junior flying it over the bleachers at the homecoming game and someone getting smacked in the head when he loses a blade by flying too close to a lamppost.
The problem is that the regulation is going to affect the former group of people more than the latter. The people who already follow the regulations and fly responsibly are the ones who will actually register and the people flying in stupid places are the people who aren't going to register. The only thing this is going to accomplish is the headlines are going to change from "A drone crashed on the football field" to "An unregistered drone crashed on the football field".