At the end of 2015, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) required any person operating a drone for recreation or hobby to submit a registration form and a fee of $5. According to the federal mandate, any owner flying a drone weighing less than 55 pounds was required to affix registration information onto their aircraft. Failure to comply could result in federal punishment. Of course, the big problem is that there shouldn't have been a database or registration fee at all.

This initial decision was in response to concern regarding the safety of drone operations in public airspace. The problem, though, was this law seemed to contradict regulations already in place pertaining to model aircraft, but the FAA asserted their authority to conduct these aircraft registrations and began collecting public information in December of 2015. To encourage participation, the fee was refunded for any registrant during the first 30 days.

In that first 30 days, nearly 300,000 owners decided to take advantage of the free period and the FAA celebrated its success:

"The registration numbers we're seeing so far are very encouraging," said FAA Administrator Michael Huerta. "We're working hard to build on this early momentum and ensure everyone understands the registration requirement."

AP

Unfortunately, the benefits were practically impossible to quantify and the FAA was scant on releasing any other information regarding statistics related to public safety. But the federal drone registration database continued to grow and in December 2016, the FAA announced that 616,000 owners had registered upon the first anniversary of the nation-wide system. Most recently in May Huerta tweeted that that number had quickly climbed to 820,000.

That's about $2.6 million from the 520,000 plus individuals that ponied up the $5 to comply with questionably authorized federal mandate. But later in May, a Federal Appeals Court struck down the requirement to register your drone for hobby ruling it violates section 336 of the FAA Modernization and Reform Act of 2012. This action against registration was spearheaded by drone hobbyist John Taylor who argued that drones qualify as "model aircraft."

The courts agreed and now the FAA is offering to refund everyone their $5. But to add insult to injury, a request through the Freedom of Information Act by Taylor discovered that FAA did not enforce a single action based on the drone pilot registry.

According to the request,

"A search of the Enforcement Information System (EIS)and the National Program Tracking and Reporting System (NPTRS), revealed no records pertaining to enforcement actions arising from operations in which the operator was identified by use of a Part 48 registration number."

The reason behind the entire registration system, much like the requirement to register your automobile, is to hold irresponsible and criminal user accountable for their actions. The database would allow officials to use the registration numbers on lost or crashed drones to locate and prosecute their owners.

But a year and a half later—with nearly $3 million and 820,000 users—and the FAA didn't find a single person that was worthy of prosecution.

While the FAA is in process of reviewing the Federal Appeals Court decision, they've offered a form to request deletion from the database and a refund of your fee. While it would be a happy event to get that $5 back in your pocket, but you might not want to.

The form says you must certify, in writing, that you intend to operate your drone under the guidelines set forth in the FAA Modernization and Reform Act of 2012 as related to model aircraft. That seems innocent enough, but it's still outside the ruling from the Federal Appeals court and can be interpreted as a breach of individual rights under current regulations. If you're interested in more reasons why requesting a refund might not be in your best interest, check out this lengthy discussion from one of the attorneys involved in Federal Appeals case.

So if you're desperate to get your cash back and feel comfortable agreeing to a legal obligation that seems to be outside the law, then requesting a refund is just the thing for you.

For now we can only wait for a response to the court ruling by the FAA. There's a good reason ($3 million reasons) to believe they'll push to continue the collection of drone registrations.

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