FAA Says Drones May Be Used For Fun... But Not For Profit

from the because-how-dare-we-allow-innovation dept

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Earlier this year, we wrote about a court saying that the FAA's rules that banned the use of drones for anything commercial were overstepping the FAA's mandate, and making it clear that such drones should be considered legal. The FAA has appealed, and in an attempt to drive home its point that not a single potential commercial use of a drone is legal, the FAA has doubled down by clearly laying out what's not allowed . Lots of people are pointing out that the FAA's claims are likely to ground the high profile plans by Amazon to deliver packages by drone, but it's some of the other things that are on the prohibited list that strike me as even more ridiculous:I can almost, kinda, barely, sorta see the rationale for saying that package delivery is not allowed, since you could see how that might interfere with other things or cause problems. And, in case you're wondering, the footnoted "6" after that "delivering packages to people for a fee" clarifies that "free shipping" on a purchased product doesn't count.But... the rest of the items in the list all seemtroubling to me. None of those seem like cases where there's likely to be any interference with aircraft or any other kind of problem. Drone use for real estate videos is increasingly common and something that actually seems. Here's an example of one such video:Can anyone explain any reason why this should be illegal? Same with the use of drones to determine if commercial crops should be watered. That sounds like a really good idea . But it's not allowed. Because the FAA appears to basically want to control absolutely everything. This seems like a massive overreach in so many ways.

Filed Under: commercial use, crops, drones, faa, real estate, regulation, tacocopter