Up Next: Drone Neutrality?

Apparently the FAA has FCC-envy over Net Neutrality, and wants to regulate even amateur drone flyers like me.  Now they’re saying you can’t post drone video footage to YouTube because YouTube has ads, dontchaknow, and that makes drone footage a commercial use.  From Motherboard:

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.

Guess I should expect a letter for a previous post here that featured drone video. Oh what the heck, I’ll re-run it now just to keep a couple of bureaucratic drones at the FAA busy:

Well, if I can’t post drone videos any more, I’ll have to go back to teenage hot-rodding then.  Here’s about 90-seconds of the best roller coaster in California, and it’s not at Six Flags or Disneyland—it’s State Hwy 58, my favorite back road in the southern half of the state, shot with my Sony HDR-AS100V that I’m using as a dashcam.  Fasten your seat belt and drop a dramamine:

I can see it now: I’ll get a letter from NHTSA and the FAA.

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