Amazon Delivery Drones

Remember

that story I wrote the other day about the FAA’s restrictions against commercial use of drones? Motherboard reports that a federal judge has dismissed the FAA’s first (and only) case against someone making commercial use of a drone. 29-year-old Raphael Pirker, fined for filming a commercial at the University of Virginia, contended that the FAA has never actually issued any binding regulations restricting commercial use of drones, and the judge agreed. Though the FAA issued a policy notice in 2007 ostensibly making them illegal, the notice was only advisory and not actually legally binding.

So, until and unless the FAA puts through the necessary paperwork to make commercial drones explicitly illegal, there is at least one precedent stating that they are, in fact, legal. So Amazon is free to deliver light purchases, Netflix is free to deliver movies (or not), and that florist can deliver flowers if he wants to.

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