In legislative terms, drones are a new thing. It will take years for the law to catch up and in the meantime, I suppose we have to rely on the common sense of those who operate them.
The problem with asking permission for just about anything is that for most officials, the instinctive response is “No way.” Once you have been refused permission, you can be in trouble for violating that. If you go ahead without prior consultation, anyone who objects will be scratching around to find an offence to charge you with.
It’s my guess that, in the absence of any National legislation, individual States/Cities/Districts will create their own rules and the whole thing will become a nightmare for anyone who wants to fly their drone outside their own home area.
Good advice, but seemingly rarely followed by news reporting organizations. I’ve seen many instances of reporters shoving microphones into victims faces and asking “how did it feel when you saw your house in flames”. Sad business.
Doesn’t directly answer the question, but in case it gives you a sense of what other jurisdications have deemed appropriate, in the U.K. the laws stipulate (amongst other specifics):
you must have the drone in direct sight at all times
maximum altitude of 400 feet
a drone must remain a minimum of 50 metres away from any person, vehicle or building you don’t control.
for commercial drone use you need to be licensed with the CAA.
Thanks for the replies everyone. I hope people keep chiming in - even though I’m under no illusion that any kind of consensus is likely to be reached here, it still helps to get a variety of opinions.
If you are using this footage in ANY commercial sense, then you need to obtain a Remote Pilot license from the FAA.
At that point, you are restricted from flying over the tops of people that are not part of your flight operations without a waiver granted by the FAA (which, I promise you, will take months to get). Now, there is a little flexibility there, though… “part of flight operations” is not necessarily defined, so if you worked out an agreement with the emergency responders, they could easily be considered part of your flight operation.
Next up is airspace considerations- you would have to be flying in uncontrolled airspace (again, if used for commercial purposes) or have an airspace authorization from the FAA (which literally takes months, nowadays). If you are flying non-commercially, then you cannot fly within 5 miles of a towered airport without permission from air traffic control.
And on commercial vs. non-commercial: if it even SMELLS like there is a commercial interest in your flight, I wouldn’t recommend flying it. It doesn’t take much to get your part 107 commercial license (I took and passed the test the day it was available, one of the first 107-licensed pilots in Wyoming, if not THE first), so those who have made the minimal effort get pretty annoyed by unlicensed pilots taking potential earnings away from them… so it is quite possible that you might get reported to the FAA if a potential competitor can identify you.
FWIW, drones are being incorporated into fire service and you might be able to establish a relationship with the local emergency services folks that would make it possible to do what you’re proposing. If it’s worth it to you to go to that trouble.
My local fire department has a drone that it uses to provide overhead views of structure fires and to aid in ground searches for missing persons. (It has flashing red lights on it, which I assume means other drones must pull over to let it pass.)
The drone is operated by a fire officer who is trained and authorized to use it at fire scenes, but he also works with a member of our civilian fire auxiliary who happens to be a drone enthusiast and has even better drones. The officer sometimes calls on that civilian to bring his drone to training events and such, though I don’t know if he’s ever called him to a working structure fire. But if he showed up and offered to provide an aerial view, and the officer who knows him is there or can be contacted, they might welcome the assistance.
Just making the point that they are recognizing the value of a real-time aerial view. That doesn’t mean they want every yahoo with a drone rushing to a fire scene, of course, so the relationship is everything.
From the little bit I’ve seen, the basic “amateur” drones have wide angle lenses and a hundred or more feet away is not going to give much detail.
But basically, my common sense rule with no legal basis - if you can’t walk any close to the action, why would you think something buzzing closer would be acceptable?
Could some explain to me just how these rules could possibly be enforced?
Are there devices that can detect the drone, and detect its WiFi data, and somehow trace it back to me? Who is operating these devices, if so? If not, how can any of this be enforced?
Say someone in a position of authority spots my drone in a place it’s not supposed to be. Say I’m hundreds of feet away from the drone, and it’s totally impossible for this same person to see my physical person. What do they do? How do they do it?
Say I take some video with my drone that turns out to be so badass looking that someone uses it, say, in a music video that winds up becoming successfully monetized online in some way. Is someone going to figure out that the video was taken with my drone, without the proper paperwork, and…sue me? Arrest me?
The short answer is that you’re right. There’s no easy way to know the provenance of drone footage and there is plenty of it floating around (heh) that’s been shot by unlicensed operators. I referred to my own experience above. There’s no single enforcement agency (in the US) that’s going to chase you down over footage shot by unlicensed ops, and it’s not something filmmakers or TV producers worry about.
However, your OP references flying a drone to film emergency situations. If the drone interferes with or even annoys the first responders, you can expect more scrutiny/questions asked of you (if they can find you) and a higher standard of scrutiny from potential buyers. Someone with a camera phone isn’t nearly as distracting or dangerous as a drone buzzing overhead. And filming of high risk situations is going t be subjected to extra scrutiny by the lawyers who vet these things.
One additional point: As mentioned upthread, consumer-level drones, say $1000 or so, typically come with a fixed focal length wide angle lens. For good detailed shots you need to get close, like under 100 feet. Your aircraft is pretty obvious at that point–and more distracting. More money gets you a better aircraft and a better camera, but now you’re risking a much bigger investment.
I have to say that the sum total of your OP and additional questions sounds like you’re trying to get legal advice on whether you can film crash scenes, fires, etc. and get away with selling the footage, in which case maybe this is the wrong forum. My advice would be, don’t do it.
I already explained that I was a professional photographer for 6 years and I know what I can and cannot photograph and film under the law. Anything that happens in plain sight in a public place is fair game. Now, attempting to profit from it is another story - involving signed releases, consent of subjects, and a number of potential legal liabilities. I know this stuff well, as I had the extreme good fortune of studying under and working alongside a top tier photojournalist - as in, you probably have his work inside your house if you have magazines from between 1980 and 2000 sitting around somewhere. I don’t say any of this shit to brag about my own abilities because I am nowhere near at the level of this guy and won’t ever be - my point is only that I have been well schooled in the ethical and legal issues pertaining to photography.
I have already taken a great deal of photos of car crashes, building fires, and police action, using telephoto lenses.
My questions here pertain to the use specifically of drones.
This is the truth. Capa said “if your pictures aren’t good enough, you’re not close enough.” And telephotos only simulate being close enough. There’s no way to replicate the dynamic angle of focus that you can get by being up close with a wider lens (18 to 35 range) by using a longer lens. The telephoto compression effect robs the shot of drama.