There needs to be a legal means for property owners to keep drones off their property -- maybe some kind of "no trespassing" beacon that acts a machine readable "no trespassing" sign? -- and recourse to deal with unwelcome drones.
I was watching a YouTube bodycam video showing police interaction with a guy who got upset that a Walmart delivery drone test was being performed on his property without permission. He shot the drone with a shotgun. I forget if he was arrested on the spot, but I think he got in huge legal trouble -- apparently in the US, shooting at a drone is treated the same as shooting at a manned aircraft, and he might have ended up getting multiple years in prison.
Shooting a human trespasser has a pretty high legal bar, and rightfully so. Shooting a robotic trespasser seems like it shouldn't carry prison time, even if unjustified it should only carry financial penalties. Especially if the law doesn't specify any peaceful recourse to get rid of unwanted robots trespassing on your property.
> There needs to be a legal means for property owners to keep drones off their property
I agree. It should be the same one we use for helicopters and airplanes.
It is the same law, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Aviation_Regulations
But drones are classified differently and the rules need to be updated and tightened up, particularly drones for commercial purposes.
I agree with you that FAR covers all airspace. There's an interesting case on airspace (over an Indian reservation) & an emergency landing that's winding its way through the courts right now [0]
[0] https://avweb.com/aviation-news/aviation-law/aopa-asks-feds-...
If they fly low enough that I could hit them with a shotgun, they're on my property. This isn't true of planes and helicopters.
These things aren't planes or helicopters and poised to be much more invasive and annoying, why people act like they are just like a passenger airplanes flying a literal mile overhead is baffling. But to that end if Amazon started making deliveries by landing a fucking helicopter in my yard on the regular I would also want them banned.
Relevant xkcd:
https://xkcd.com/1523/
> There needs to be a legal means for property owners to keep drones off their property
Does there? Why? There's no legal means to keep private aircraft (e.g. a Cessna) from flying over your property as long as they're over 500 feet. Then drones are below that, typically between 50-400 feet.
They're already not allowed to interfere with your property or privacy however. They can't hover to annoy you, or get close to snap pictures or whatever.
If you're concerned about accidents and safety, then the solution is safety regulation. But the idea that drones must keep track of which individual properties allow flight above and which don't, and try to navigate some around some kind of patchwork accordingly, is simply unpractical and unreasonable.
If drones turn out to be a general nuisance then cities/counties can ban them altogether or whatever as a collective decision, but the idea that individual property owners should be able to ban them is a terrible idea.
Perhaps individual property rights should go up to that 500 foot limit. Or at least some limit. It doesn't seem quite right that property rights end at ground level.
Your property rights don't end at ground level.
They do go up into the air, but it's basically "dozens" of feet, as opposed to hundreds. Drones can't fly at 10 ft above your property, that's clearly considered trespass/nuisance. But at 300 ft it's totally fine.
There's no exact precise "hard" limit like 100 ft because there doesn't need to be, and it depends on the height of your home, etc. But drones already aren't allowed to just hover above your pool at eye level. But if it's just passing overhead with plenty of room to spare and not specifically bothering you, then that doesn't belong to your property. Nor should it.
You probably didn't have rights to the minerals below ground level, either!
How about drones only fly over public roads when they are below 500 feet?
But why?
If you're concerned about safety, you'd prefer an out-of-control drone hits a car instead of a backyard or farmer's field?
And if you're concerned about noise, homes tend to be along roads anyways. So it's not going to change that.
And FYI, they're basically always below 500 feet, so they don't hit planes.
I believe that they were responding to this specific part of your comment:
> But the idea that drones must keep track of which individual properties allow flight above and which don't, and try to navigate some around some kind of patchwork accordingly, is simply unpractical and unreasonable
Flying over public roads would be a way to avoid flying over properties that do not allow drones and would not be unpractical.
How about we start recognizing that the occasional nuisance scaled up turns into real harm, and prohibit drones owned/operated by non-individuals from flying over anything that isn't a public way or a consensual waypoint?. This retains the ability for individual personal use and even innovation (with one's own skin in the game), while mostly heading off the perverse incentives of businesses creating externalities at scale and then ultimately enclosing the commons.
In general our society desperately needs to stop denying this basic division, and burden individuals less while applying heavier regulations to corporations/LLCs - ie artificial legal entities created by government whose sine-qua-non is already large amounts of paperwork. For another example, most of the opposition to digital privacy regulation would become moot.
>There needs to be a legal means for property owners to keep drones off their property
no, there really doesn't need to be.
i'm not saying that i'm in favor of autonomous drones flying around, i'm simply not in favor of individual people getting their own say about everything we as a society do. democracy: live with the results
it's not shooting at drones that is the big worry, it's missing the drones, and shooting at things if the law doesn't give a peaceful alternate way to get your own way is also not "great" in the pantheon of ideas.
I think there should be a way for people to have some kind of control when it comes with drones. Imagine there’s a air channel of commercial drones passing by your bedroom window, every 2-5 minutes. They’re noisy and you lose sleep over it. You want no recourse?
Commercial drones aren't allowed to fly by your bedroom window. They're flying 200-400 feet up in the air on their way somewhere, not at 15 ft next to houses. Also, the whole point is that there generally is no "air channel" because they can fly in a direct line to wherever they're going.
And if you think you're supposed to get recourse, what do you do about the noise of traffic in the street, the neighbor's lawnmower, planes passing overhead, or trains on the closest train track?
Fortunately, the walls and windows of your home already block out most noise, and if you're really sensitive when you sleep then you use a white noise machine or wear earplugs.
Drone are noisy and invasive. I know I’d be upset if the neighbor boy was flying his camera drone around my property. Amazon doesn’t get a pass just because they’re a corporation. There is all kinds of passive data gathering that a these could be doing
> democracy: live with the results
The GP was suggesting that democratically, we could define "a legal means for property owners to keep drones off their property". Your comment is the one attempting to preempt democratic consensus.
The presence and operation of drones on one’s personal property appears more corporatist in nature than democratic.
the current legal definition of property does not include the air above. it's what allows them, and airplanes, to fly over.
The top post is about property damage not flying over. This comment is in response to the idea that drone delivery is a democratically expressed need or want. I think it’s a corporate need advancing capital over labor in the name of convenience. Perhaps people only care about convenience but I’m not sure that makes it democratic.
Also I’m not a property rights lawyer but I’d contest the idea that you don’t even own an inch or a foot or several feet above your property, otherwise it would be impossible to build up. Please share a source on your “current legal definition” either in North Texas municipality where drone crash occurred or otherwise.
> no, there really doesn't need to be
Bob the Bully doesn't like you. Whenever you leave your front door, Bob will fly his drone over your head while its onboard speaker continuously curses you out with TTS. Whenever you want to have a romantic moment with your boyfriend / girlfriend, Bob's drone will be watching through the nearest window.
If you ask Bob to stop harassing you, he'll laugh and curse you out in person. If you sue Bob, after thousands in legal fees the court system will say "You're SoL; there's no law that says Bob can't do what he's doing." If involve the police, they'll say "We can't do anything because no illegal activity is occurring." If you shoot down the drone, you'll be sent to prison like the guy in the video.
You only have one realistic option in this situation, "Just put up with it." This certainly seems like a bug in the law that ought to be patched.
That's already highly illegal, it's called harassment and invasion of privacy and there are laws against it. Laws specifically against voyeurism, unlawful video surveillance, harassment and stalking, intrusion upon seclusion, nuisance...
This would easily meet the bar for a harassment complaint.