drone laws

The practice of flying drones to live-stream UK horse races – and thereby giving viewers betting on the outcomes an advantage – has come to a head again, with pilots battling parimutuel, track, and legal officials seeking to shut the profitable activity down.

In response to complaints from a resident, the city of Hamilton, Ohio has passed a proposal to outlaw drone-based invasions of privacy. The legislation, approved last week, makes it illegal to use drones “to invade the privacy of another’s home, office, enclosed space, or the private space of another.”

After junking a contentious drone policy that made industry compliance virtually impossible, India has published new “Drone Rules, 2021” with an aim to become a “global drone hub” by 2030.

India’s most populous state, Uttar Pradesh, wants to make its capital city, Lucknow, safer for women. And it wants to do so by establishing a broad-ranging surveillance setup that uses tools such as drones, facial recognition-enabled CCTV cameras, and AI-based video analytics. However, in the absence of robust data privacy laws, critics fear the program will infringe upon the privacy of citizens in a state infamous for communal polarization.

An aircraft attempting to land at Buttonville, an airport with proximity to Toronto’s suburbs, sustained “major damage” after being hit by a York Regional Police (YRP) drone earlier this month. Strangely enough, the country’s air navigation service provider, NAV Canada, was not even informed of the police drone operation.

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) receives dozens of uncrewed aircraft sighting reports every month. With incident reports coming in from pilots, citizens, and law enforcement officials alike, the FAA’s database of drone and unidentified aircraft sightings runs into thousands of Mandatory Occurrence Reports (MORs) today. So, now, an enterprising online publication is featuring these reports in an interactive map of the United States – thus making it easier for people to zoom into their neighborhood for details or explore hotspots of sightings more intimately.

A 22-year-old videographer and financial trader from Texas could never have guessed that he would be spending day two of his New York vacation with the FBI and New York Police Department’s counterterrorism unit. But that’s what happens when you accidentally fly a drone into the 7 World Trade Center building.

Friends don’t let friends fly a drone while drunk. You know it, we know it. But it appears this 56-year-old man in Japan’s Aichi Prefecture doesn’t know it. For he thought it would be OK to take a long-forgotten drone out for a spin after guzzling eight 350 ml cans of beer.

COVID air travel bans may continue to frustrate holidaymakers, but in India, the skies are finally opening up for business. Only four months after it was introduced, India has junked a contentious drone policy that made industry compliance virtually impossible. Taking its place is the new Draft Drone Rules 2021.

India has decided to free its drone industry from countless complexities and sluggish bureaucracy. The new draft drone rules proposed by the Ministry of Civil Aviation (MoCA) – Drone Rules, 2021 – promise to bring in an era of trust, self-certification, and non-intrusive monitoring. Here are the 20 biggest takeaways…

A drone belonging to Lake County Sheriff’s Office in Florida met an untimely death this week when a man opened gunfire at it in midair. Why? He thought the drone was sent to harass him.

A pair of brothers thought organizing illicit drone deliveries into a US prison was a great idea – possibly even super-genius. And it was – if, that is, setting two different legal precedents for convictions on federal drone laws was the objective.

Talk about rotten luck. All this Hong Kong man wanted to do was capture the festivities at a carnival with his drone. But he lost connection to the machine, and the drone ended up crashing at the unlikeliest of the places: inside the barracks of the Hong Kong garrison of China’s People’s Liberation Army.

As the clock ticked over into 2021, Hungary also saw brand-new drone regulations come into practice, requiring registration and testing. Those flying drones without a camera that weigh under 120 grams won’t be affected by the new regulations.

In a recent report, New Zealand‘s Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) found that 1 in 5 drone pilots are flying illegally in no-fly zones throughout the country. The report also found an increase in drone usage without an increase in the knowledge of drone laws.

Drones have made multiple close flybys of the LA home of Meghan Markle and Prince Harry in recent weeks. The couple and their young son Archie are the subjects of intense press attention that has the family on edge. They also fear more nefarious intentions of the drone operators.

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