
Federal appeals court says hobbyist drones don't need to be registered - tbrownaw
http://fortune.com/2017/05/19/drone-faa-registration-appeals-hobbyist/
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cr0sh
I'm not sure how I feel about this.

As it was, the drone registration system seemed reasonable enough - it wasn't
onerous, and it wasn't expensive, and to an extent, it spawned a lot of
companies to make drones that fell underneath the weight limit but still had a
lot of capability.

At the same time, the rules imposed a small barrier on people who were just
enjoying their model aircraft flying (ie - not what we would normally consider
drones).

Other parts of the law (and I am not sure this registration system being
struck down for now changes anything about the rest of the laws) seem to look
to stifle innovations by hobbyists.

For instance, according to everything I've read, I can't legally fly (even
after registering it) an autonomous drone, because the law doesn't seem to
address the concept of a drone not under the control of an operator. Nor can I
easily fly a drone in an FPV manner; even if I have a spotter, I must always
be able to keep in "line of sight" of the drone, which practically eliminates
the head mounted display system.

Furthermore, the whole "line of sight" prevents me from attempting to create a
long-range autonomous or semi-autonomous drone for hobby purposes. One might
argue why anyone would want to do that for hobby purposes instead of
commercial purposes, but I don't think that's a valid question. I should be
able to do this, and all those other possibilities, but the laws limit that,
from my reading.

Now - if anything should fail - that's on me. And that's where I thought the
registry was a good idea. Make it so that someone could register their
equipment in good faith, and if they cause a problem (on purpose or accident),
and don't report it or own up to it, then there's a means to track them down
based on their registration. This of course won't stop people who don't
register.

At the same time, on all of this, it would be nice if a few bad apples didn't
ruin it for everyone else. For the longest time, no one had a problem with
this kind of thing, then of course bad actors had to get involved and ruin it,
forcing the hand of the government to step in. This issue is far from settled.

