This is a good discussion to have.
Personally, I do not like seeing other people's drones hovering. Never have. It is creepy, not knowing who is on the other side of the robot camera.
Also, I've told my friends a couple of times, if someone shoots my bird down over their property, I won't be upset or even irritated. Hopefully I'd be able to find them, and I'd buy them lunch if they'd let me, to let them know who I am, and that I'm ok with their marksmanship.
In my opinion, I think if someone is flying over your back yard, and you can safely neutralize it, you should have the right to take them down. I cannot recommend shooting into the air, but there are shotgun rounds that don't travel far.
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In your article, it seems as if there is no room for other people to express their disagreement with your views.. You are basically insulting anyone who happens to be 'ignorant' and doesn't want an unknown drone flying over them. It seems as though there could be a misunderstanding about how many different reasons people might have to be uncomfortable about drones in their area, and rather than write them off, maybe consider that not everyone flies with the same motivations that you do, and maybe people have good reasons to not trust that all drones are benign.
Consider this -- many people are *way* behind the 'cutting edge' of technology. Believe it or not, there are large swaths of society who barely use the internet, or don't use it at all. I'm thinking specifically of elderly people and plain people like the Amish, etc..
If all you knew was that it was a flying robot, and you have no other education about it, how would you feel if you were out having a walk in the park with your family, or if you were in your back yard, or if you're "walking on the hills" and a drone appears out of nowhere. If I didn't know any better, my active imagination could suggest many things to me to explain what that thing is flying in the sky, and only some would be innocuous.
Now, consider all you know about drone technology. If you don't know who the pilot is or where they are, and a drone appears, it could be from anywhere, being flown by anyone, on any sort of mission. That is a lot of 'any' that our brains would fill in the gaps for, and I can think of some people I know whom I hope never get a drone, because I know they would use it for nuisance/violating purposes..
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To me, currently, the biggest problem is congested airspace. This year, there will be x million people around the world receiving their new drone, and how many of them do you think will read all the rules, register their drones, and practice safely before taking off and seeing how high they can fly, with almost no thought about the flight paths of jets and the potential for disaster if one of these gets sucked into the intake?
All of this to say, I can identify with the apprehension people will have as drones become more commonplace. I think it is hasty to declare someone ignorant before realizing why they don't like your drone. You stated,
But, do you know this as a fact? In fact, I could refer you to dozens of communities online where people don't give a flip about the rules, and it's not just a hundred or so folks.. it is a lot of people around the country, globe. I won't refer you to them in the context, but the fact remains.
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Is this really a 'huge assumption?' You say it's most likely not looking at you, but more likely looking horizontally.. but how can you make such a claim? You really have no idea what other pilots are doing. I fly around all the time looking down, filming folks who happen to be in the area where I'm flying, and so do many other people, and while there is nothing technically illegal about this in general, I have to always keep in my mind, "What would I be irritated by, if I were this person noticing this flying robot?"
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I'm not motivated to respond to everything I disagree with in your post, but since you specifically asked for feedback, these are some of the most pertinent issues I thought to respond to.
On a final note, I vehemently disagree with anyone who uses the argument "well, we're being recorded everywhere we go anyway, so nobody should care if my camera records them also."
This very mindset is part of the reason we have allowed cameras to invade most public and many 'private' areas around the globe, and now children are growing up with the idea that they are always being recorded, which actually will have an inverse effect than what people are hoping for -- instead of making people more safe, children are growing up not caring about 'misbehaving' on camera, because the ever-present eye doesn't really seem connected to them. Today, most adults would at least think twice before doing something questionable if they know a camera is pointed at them. Tomorrow, people won't care.
www.forbes.com
