register your drones

Quadcopter/drones will be popular this holiday season (estimating 400K will be sold). Many incidents have already shown that there are fairly profound safety and societal issues that are raised by flying things with cameras. Back in the day a pilot needed to acquire skills to fly an object around, and there were a lot of limitations. Now pretty much any idiot who can charge a battery and touch a waypoint can send a propellor driven object with a camera into the sky.

A report has gone to the FAA around suggested regulations. It isn’t as draconian as some had feared, but it does create a “national registry” and mean that when drones are outlawed, only outlaws with have drones…