So, there was a RC "drone" hovering above my house yesterday...I was kinda pissed.
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@scottalanmiller said:
One of the lawyers: There are two common law legal protections that are available to prevent harassment from drones: trespass and nuisance. The law is not abundantly clear on where a landowner’s exclusive control of airspace ends and the public airspace begins. Modern interpretations of property law hold that property owners’ airspace rights extend to as much of the space above the ground that is occupied or used in connection with the land.
Nuisance claims can also be filed against drone operators if their activity leads to a "substantial and unreasonable interference" with the use of your property. Drones can be noisy, frighten livestock and annoy landowners, thereby creating a nuisance and reducing property value.
If it is interfering with your family, that would seem to apply. If you have to listen to it, watch it, worry about it crashing, etc. you are being nuisanced by it.
Still that would mean it's nusiance or invasion of privacy, pepeing tom etc. Not trespassing.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@thecreativeone91 said:
@scottalanmiller said:
@thecreativeone91 said:
No, it wasn't. You are seeing things the way you want to not, what they ACTUALLY say.
I provided the quote.
Cool Story.
I'm providing references and quotes from attorneys.
Yes, and the links you provide did NOT agree that it was trespassing. You are skewing them.
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@thecreativeone91 said:
Still that would mean it's nusiance or invasion of privacy, pepeing tom etc. Not trespassing.
Each of the attorneys and the television station (maybe an attorney, who knows) mentions trespass specifically and nuisance as an additional course of potential legal action.
You keep saying definitively that it is not trespassing, but the attorneys seem to feel that it likely is. What's the basis for your belief that it definitely is not?
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@thecreativeone91 said:
Yes, and the links you provide did NOT agree that it was trespassing. You are skewing them.
In what way? Each one that I provided stated that it was possible or likely. If they state otherwise, provide the quote. I keep finding agreement in article after article. None are totally for sure, all agree that it seems more likely than not. It is certainly a risk. And trespass is just the strongest case, nuisance would likely either cover when trespass does not, or doubly when it does.
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Also from the same article at the station: But even if the drones aren’t directly trespassing, bothered neighbors who say aerial package delivery interferes with the enjoyment of their property could bring a nuisance case.
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This article from IEEE states that the airspace limit is solid at 400ft. And that drones under it are trespassing. But says that the trespassing isn't strictly illegal yet. But California is considering making it much more clear. It doesn't suggest that it is legal today, only that clarity might be added tomorrow. But it makes it pretty clear that they feel that the sub 400ft airspace is owned by the property owner and above that requires FAA clearance.
http://spectrum.ieee.org/view-from-the-valley/robotics/aerial-robots/californias-no-drone-zones
It is already for drones in California to record people. This bill is purely to stop them 100% in your airspace without question.
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@scottalanmiller said:
This article from IEEE states that the airspace limit is solid at 400ft. And that drones under it are trespassing
It does not say that. It say they are considering a bill to limit drone usage below 400ft in California only.
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So if there is a drone over my property with a camera, it may be recording events in my back yard. Now, let's assume I have a privacy fence (tall wodden fence that generally obscures my back yard from view of people at ground level).
That drone may or may not be recording what is happening in my back yard, when I obviously want my privacy. If I see it, my response (if I do not live inside the city limits) is grab my gun and bang,bang,bang,bang,bang,click, click ... (I'm a bad shot)... Especially if I feel like it is just hovering over my property.
I'm not a mean guy. If it's flying around, then I'd likely not be bothered by it. But if it hovers over my property and I feel like it is spying on me or my family, all bets are off.
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I don't have a gun so I'd probably try and hit it with my frisbee.
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@thecreativeone91 said:
@scottalanmiller said:
This article from IEEE states that the airspace limit is solid at 400ft. And that drones under it are trespassing
It does not say that. It say they are considering a bill to limit drone usage below 400ft in California only.
Here is the part where it declares the line at 400ft:
above 400 feet, the airspace is regulated by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). The FAA is still working out its drone rules, but at this point the regulations require hobbyists to keep their drones below 400 feet.
So that part is very black and white (according to the article, which seems unlikely to be true given everything the lawyers have said about it being around that number but undetermined officially.) But the article itself seems sure of it.
You are correct, the bit about it being trespassing was in a title that is not on the article itself. It must be part of a link from elsewhere that someone added when linking to the article. The title that I saw referred to the location of the drones as trespass. But it wasn't the IEEE's title.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@thecreativeone91 said:
@scottalanmiller said:
This article from IEEE states that the airspace limit is solid at 400ft. And that drones under it are trespassing
It does not say that. It say they are considering a bill to limit drone usage below 400ft in California only.
Here is the part where it declares the line at 400ft:
above 400 feet, the airspace is regulated by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). The FAA is still working out its drone rules, but at this point the regulations require hobbyists to keep their drones below 400 feet.
That doesn't mean what you think it does. The FAA allows Drone use below 400ft, However anything more than that is US Government property and only the FAA can make rules on that, not local government.
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@thecreativeone91 said:
What are these models of? How does model aircraft apply to drones?
That's an incredibly inappropriate term to use if that applies to drones and other "non-model" aircraft. Nothing model about them.
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How is "near people" interpreted? Seems like hovering over people in their backyard would be generally seen as "near people."
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@scottalanmiller said:
@thecreativeone91 said:
What are these models of? How does model aircraft apply to drones?
That's an incredibly inappropriate term to use if that applies to drones and other "non-model" aircraft. Nothing model about them.
That is the offical term. "Drone" is a marketing term. It's not a term used by anyone else.
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@thecreativeone91 said:
That is the offical term. "Drone" is a marketing term. It's not a term used by anyone else.
I totally understand that drone is purely a "soft" term. It's the term model, though, that violates the English usage of the term. The word model means something that doesn't apply here. Lots of terms could be used that would include all these devices, model, in English, does not though.
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@scottalanmiller said:
model, in English, does not though.
Model is because it's smaller aircraft.. Like model cars.
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@thecreativeone91 said:
Model is because it's smaller aircraft.. Like model cars.
A model car is a smaller model of a car.. That's what I am asking, what is the drone a model of?
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A model car is one that is a replica of a larger car. A toy car or other term applies when it is not a replica.
In the hobby communities this has always been a clear distinction. A drone is not a smaller copy of something larger, the drone itself is the original.
In model railroading, for example, this is a tightly held distinction. A toy or prototype are different than a model. You can only call something a model train when it is an attempt to replicate a real world train, but when you just made something that looks like a train and runs on tracks smaller than a certain size.
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A three-dimensional representation of a person or thing or of a proposed structure, typically on a smaller scale than the original: a model of St Paul’s Cathedral [as modifier]: a model aeroplane - Oxford
Notice that it is that it is a replica that makes it a model. That it is smaller is only "typical." The term model in English is very, very much not what the FAA means to imply there.
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If I was a judge looking at that FAA page, I would say that clearly nothing in it suggests that it applies to non-model aircraft like most drones. They are primary, non-model, devices and the FAA has gone pretty out of their way to make the rules stated on that page appear to be specifically for the modeling community, not the operators of non-model small aircraft.
I doubt that the law itself uses those terms or states them without clarifying them. But that page is horrible. If I was looking for drone info, knowing that they are obviously not models, I would not look there.
And there is precedence of that. Classic cars, for example, are carefully regulated in the US. When you are doing something historic or modeling there are often special laws for doing that where operating non-models is seen as a different activity. This is both legal and standard for the hobby communities to be split along those lines.
People who do model trains and people who use toy trains often have different stores to shop at and different hobby events. Just like people who make replicas of antique aircraft and people using drones have essentially no hobby overlap other than overlapping (but unclear) regulations. And even what they want to do is completely different. No one was concerned about or ran into people operating models in their backyard, but drones are there all of the time, it seems (I hear about these questions a lot, probably just a hot topic.)
But already I know commercial drone operators and I've never known a model airplane enthusiast.
