MechAg94 wrote:Charles L. Cotton wrote:Abraham wrote:If I'm weeding my flower/truck garden you shouldn't have the right to video it.
Isn't my back yard - my back yard?
Leave me out of your drone activities. I'm doing no harm.
I agree in concept, but the SCOTUS has opined that we have no expectation of privacy outside our home, or even inside if we leave our blinds open. I'm concerned with how the FAA even considered that it has the authority to regulate posting of videos, regardless how they were obtained.
Chas.
Wouldn't that depend on if the person with the camera is using footage of you or your property for profit? That is different issue than privacy though.
I can't give the legal citation to back this up, and it is strictly from memory........but I think that
used to be the case, but no longer. The example that comes to my mind is some years ago, the owners of the Empire State Building sought to enforce their right to control publication and other use of photography which contained their building. Their position was that their building was iconic, and that they had intellectual property rights to control its usage in imagery...........which is patently stupid, since they could then claim ownership over any photograph of the NYC skyline, including images taken by/for the ownership of the World Trade Towers. I don't know if there was litigation involved, or any court rulings, but I think that they eventually gave up. The ACLU takes a position that photographers have rights:
https://www.aclu.org/kyr-photo. According to them:
Your rights as a photographer:
- When in public spaces where you are lawfully present you have the right to photograph anything that is in plain view. That includes pictures of federal buildings, transportation facilities, and police. Such photography is a form of public oversight over the government and is important in a free society.
- When you are on private property, the property owner may set rules about the taking of photographs. If you disobey the property owner's rules, they can order you off their property (and have you arrested for trespassing if you do not comply).
{——SNIP——}
- Note that the right to photograph does not give you a right to break any other laws. For example, if you are trespassing to take photographs, you may still be charged with trespass.
The way I interpret that is that whether or not you may legally take pictures/video of someone's backyard from the air via use of a drone is dependent upon whether or not the FAA says you are trespassing onto someone's property when you are flying over it. But while the FAA may control airspace, they have no say over intellectual property at all......unless it is their own.
The law seems to use words like "reasonable" in a lot of situations, so maybe it boils down to whether or not you have a reasonable expectation of privacy from the air in the location at which you live. If you live in suburbia where people are packed cheek by jowl, it may be an unreasonable expectation. On the other hand, if I live on 1,000 acres and my house is located on the far side of the property from the road, and the only indication of a home in the distance is a mailbox at the end of my driveway, then I might have a reasonable expectation of privacy, and you would have to be going out of your way to violate that privacy. If you had to trespass onto my property to get close enough to launch the drone and invade my privacy, then I suspect you would have zero standing if I shot your drone down. It would be the same thing as if you had invaded my property to take still photos, and I caught you, confiscated the camera, stripped the film/data card out of it, and handed it all back to you after having erased the data card. You'd be lucky to be leaving the property without a police escort and some silver bracelets.
I don't know if it's illegal or not, but in that kind of situation, I might be
inclined to shoot down the drone to protect my privacy. It would be up to the owner to prove that I had done it, and I have a shovel. He wouldn't be getting his drone back.
“Hard times create strong men. Strong men create good times. Good times create weak men. And, weak men create hard times.”
― G. Michael Hopf, "Those Who Remain"
#TINVOWOOT
