Life for drone pilots in the U.S. just got more complicated.

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) scored an important win in its fight to regulate drone use in the U.S. on Tuesday, when the nation's aviation safety board ruled that regulations for traditional aircrafts also apply to unmanned aerial vehicles.

See also: The 19 best drone photos of 2014

That means the FAA has the authority to fine drone pilots when it deems they have broken rules against reckless or careless flights. In other words, the government has the power to hold drone operators accountable. That complicates things for drone users, as the patchwork of rules keep changing, rulings contradict each other, and there's little clarity around what is and isn't legal use.

The ruling came in the high-profile case of Raphael "Trappy" Pirker, who was fined $10,000 for a "reckless flight" in 2011, when he allegedly flew his drone "directly towards an individual standing on a ... sidewalk."

Pirker was hired to fly his drone near University of Virginia campus to make a video for the university, which the FAA billed as a commercial flight, and thus illegal, though that was not the basis for his fine. (The FAA has long maintained that commercial drone flights are illegal, even though some remain skeptical of the FAA's authority to regulate drone use.)

As Motherboard explained, the rules on manned and unmanned flights are hard to reconcile. The statute used against Pirker says any flight below 500 feet is reckless, while FAA regulations on drones allow flights under 400 feet.

Pirker won an appeal in the case in March but the FAA appealed to the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), which published its ruling on Tuesday. (Pirker's case will now return to a judge who will decide whether the fine will stand, in light of the new ruling.)

"An aircraft is 'any' 'device' that is 'used for flight.' We acknowledge the definitions are as broad as they are clear, but they are clear nonetheless," the NTSB wrote in its ruling, equating traditional manned aircrafts with model aircrafts, which include drones.

The NTSB said that the federal "definitions on their face do not exclude even a 'model aircraft' from the meaning of 'aircraft.'"

The ruling means that "those drone operators who believe FAA regulations do not apply to them are now, as a matter of law, wrong," as Gregory McNeal, a law professor at Pepperdine University who writes about drone laws, put it on Forbes. "Drone operators can be fined for reckless operation, and they are now on notice of that fact."

Some experts are already criticizing the ruling.

According to the NTSB, it is now possible to fly this "aircraft" recklessly. pic.twitter.com/LDJaR1z2Tc — Peter Sachs, Esq. (@TheDroneGuy) November 18, 2014

Kenneth Quinn, formerly general counsel for the FAA, on the other hand, praised the outcome.

"It's a huge win for the FAA, and signals it's not going to be the Wild West for drones, but a careful, orderly, safe introduction of unmanned aircraft systems into the national airspace system," he said.

BONUS: Drones vs. Government: Who Owns America's Skies?

Additional reporting by the Associated Press