Amongst all the doom and gloom - maybe a few positives here to redress the balance.
Our hobby faces serious problems at the moment - not only the bad press and scare mongering, but you only have to look at the drone laws in Canada/France and so on. National Parks in the US are banning drones - and flying over sparsely populated arrears of outstanding beauty is (to my mind) the perfect habitat to be using a drone,. Even here in the UK the Forestry Commission in Scotland has banned frying. This is not conjecture or speculation - this is a hard current truth. Speculation is -its going to get worse with more and more places banning drones in a knee-jerk reaction.
Now, in a nutshell - what DJI are doing now and (possibly) doing in the future is simply making drone flying more controllable and accountable. They, quite rightly, perceive that worldwide legislation could easily wipe-out the market for consumer drones in the very near future.
What they are doing is quite forward thinking. They recognise that the fear of drones (in part driven by the small minority of reckless flyers) is what's driving legislation and localised banning of drones. They don't want this - they lose a vey lucrative world leading business.
What they are saying to the law-makers and scare mongers around the world is - "We Recognise your concerns and we are making ever effort to make our drones safe - even if it upsets our users". They also recently made a very public reward offered to catch an irresponsible flyer near a busy airport. They could not be sending a clearer message.
Now, we all want total freedom - but that is a false hope. I want to drive my car at 100+mph without a licence plate wherever I want - but I can't. Nor can anybody and for very good reasons - which we all accept.
Now for the positives I alluded to earlier:
If my DJI drone can be shown to only fly legally, and has failsafe devices fitted which stop it flying where it shouldn't, and the pilot can be held accountable for its actions - then *maybe* certain areas may relax their restrictions. National parks may allow "licenced" drones operated by "qualified "pilots only. Pass a test, use a controlled drone and they will find it harder to put a blanked ban on all flying. We might yet be able to salvage our hobby.
The way this is being done is actually very good. I was very annoyed when I found that here in the UK my transmitter power is limited and I was limited to the 2.5mile range. But - at least when I travel to the US for example I automatically get the 4 miles! The same applies to any other geographical restrictions - we get the best that out *current* location allows. That's very good.
Now, take this a step further. Want to fly over a public space that sometimes hosts events? With real-time NFZ's the area could be open to "licenced" drones and the event organisers could apply for a temporary NFZ for the duration of the event.
Geofencing is very accurate, popular arrears of national parks and monuments could be NFS's but other areas could be made available us.
If drones are constantly giving out their location - then other drones can avoid them - aircraft can be made aware - maybe I could get warning up on my R/C if my Mavic "sees" and search and rescue helicopter flying low nearby.
The police may knock on your door saying somebody has been reported spying on their daughter sunbathing and you have a drone. "No Officer - look at the logs, it proves it wasn't me."
This technology could be made to work for us - not *just* against us. Its not all bad.
Don't get me wrong. If eventually I'm forced to only fly only true VLOS (about 300m in my case with a Mavic) - then is of little use as a photographic tool and I will sadly be forced to leave the hobby. But I don't think it will go that far.
If I'm forced to accept local restrictions, pass a test, register my drone and be accountable - them I'm willing to pay that price if we can still enjoy this hobby. - up to a point