4 ms·

I'm a bit torn about this. I almost always come down on the side of 'less red tape' but I strongly suspect that putting in place a lightweight licensing framewo

• dbcurtis 11y ago
  It is interesting to compare drones to the state of wireless a century ago. 100 years ago, every hacker with access to an oatmeal can and an old Model T spark coil was building a spark-gap transmitter. There was no licensing. It was pretty crazy with commercial wireless companies trying to contact ships at sea, the Navy, and hackers all on top of each other. So, the Commerce Department regulated radio. It basically outlawed personal wireless. The "hams" put up a fuss, and the government gave them everything from "200 meters and down", subject to a license. This is because all the World Famous Professors had said that any wavelength shorter than 200 meters was completely useless and of no value. The hams whined a bit, but then got on with discovering short wave propagation. At which point, most of the short wave spectrum was taken away from them, but they were able to retain slivers this time. So here we are again. Hackers have cool technology. Government takes it away as much as they can get away with, licenses a little bit back to the hackers. Next move: hackers. The cycle continues.
  • TrevorJ 11y ago
    That's an interesting point. I think there's definitely a give and take on both sides here and good points to be made all around.