The FAA Says You Can't Post Drone Videos on YouTube

[PoliticAverse]

If you fly a drone and post footage on YouTube, you could end up with a letter from the Federal Aviation Administration.

Earlier this week, the agency sent a legal notice to Jayson Hanes, a Tampa-based drone hobbyist who has been posting drone-shot videos online for roughly the last year.

The FAA said that, because there are ads on YouTube, Hanes's flights constituted a commercial use of the technology subject to stricter regulations and enforcement action from the agency. It said that if he did not stop flying “commercially,” he could be subject to fines or sanctions.

"This office has received a complaint regarding your use of an unmanned aerial vehicle (aka drone) for commercial purposes referencing your video on the website youtube.com as evidence," the letter reads. "After a review of your website, it does appear that the complaint is valid."

Read the rest at: http://motherboard.vice.com/en_uk/read/the-faa-says-you-cant-post-drone-videos-on-youtube?trk_source=popular

[rhett o rick]

1. Here is where this country has come to. The government can kill people including

innocent children, in any country they so choose with drones, but I can't post videos taken from a drone.

[Blue_Tires]

2. You also can't kill anyone with a drone, either...

and the totalitarian FAA also restricts the airspace you can fly drones (or any personal aircraft) in...

[Sinistrous]

3. Totally specious reasoning by the FAA.

[Ed Suspicious]

4. Asinine. This is what gives government regulation a bad name.

[cui bono]

5. That seems like a stretch.

What if you didn't use the drone to take the video? Say you flew a remote controlled helicopter and took the video with a handheld video camera, the old fashioned way, and posted that on youtube? Wouldn't that be commercial use of technology? Never heard of them being worried about that.

Just because the camera is attached to the drone doesn't change what is happening, the flying of a small object for recreation. The person who made the video isn't (usually) making the ad money, youtube is, so it's not the drone portion of the equation that is making the money, it's the internet portion, and that would happen with or without the drone.

[William Seger]

6. That sucks, but he can turn off advertising

If he's enabled advertising on his channel, then technically he is using the videos "for commercial purposes." People who don't do that shouldn't have a problem, but it sure seems that the FAA could make better use of their resources than chasing down people who do.

[w4rma]

7. What is the mechanism to pilot a drone 'commercially', then? (nt)

[66 dmhlt]

8. That's an EXTREMELY broad definition of "Commercial" by the FAA

Doesn't the FAA down in Florida have more important things to keep them occupied?