DRONES OVER FLW

[MOman2]

I could not remember my old sign is as MOman so I made a new sign in
Numerous times we have all come upon a FLW structure only to find that much of not all the structure cannot not even be seen from the public road.
Recently I have considered sending a drone over the property to get pictures of the FLW structure.
Apparently there is little to nothing a private property owner can do to prevent this intrusion:

You may be powerless to stop a drone from hovering over your own yard

By Andrea Peterson and Matt McFarland January 13 at 6:46 PM Follow @kansasalps Follow @mattmcfarland

LOUISVILLE, KY - William Merideth holds the shotgun that he used to shoot a drone out of the sky above his backyard (Photo by Luke Sharrett/For The Washington Post)
William Merideth had just finished grilling dinner for his family when he saw a drone hovering over his land. So he did what he said any Kentuckian might do — he grabbed his Benelli M1 Super 90 shotgun, took aim and unleashed three rounds of birdshot.
“The only people I’ve heard anything negative from are liberals that don’t want us having guns and people who own drones,� said the truck company owner, now a self-described “drone slayer.� Downing the quadcopter, which had a camera, was a way to assert his right to privacy and property, he said.
The drone was owned by John Boggs, a hobbyist, who told authorities he was trying to take pictures of the scenery. He argues in a lawsuit filed this month in U.S. District Court in Louisville that Merideth did not have the right to shoot the craft down because the government controls every inch of airspace in America.
For decades, the issue of who controls the nation’s air didn’t matter much to everyday Americans. Planes, after all, typically must stay hundreds of feet above ground while in the air.
But drones that can take off or land almost anywhere -- and the tech companies who dream of using them to deliver goods to your front porch -- are igniting a debate over who exactly owns the air just above ordinary homes and lawns.
“There is gray area in terms of how far your property rights extend,� said Jeramie Scott, national security counsel at the Electronic Privacy Information Center. “It’s going to need to be addressed sooner rather than later as drones are integrated into the national airspace.�
The issue is becoming more urgent as drones are crowding America’s skies: The Consumer Technology Association estimated 700,000 were sold last year.
According to the Federal Aviation Administration, every inch above the tip of your grass blades is the government’s jurisdiction. “The FAA is responsible for the safety and management of U.S. airspace from the ground up,� said an agency spokesman, echoing rules laid out on its website.
But common law long held that landowners' rights went “all the way to Heaven.� And today, it’s clear that they have some rights.
After all, developers and even cities sometimes sell off rights to the air above their buildings. And if a neighbor has a tree limb hanging over your fence, you generally can chop it off.
The rise of air travel initially sparked questions about where those rights end and flyable space begins. The issue reached the Supreme Court during the 1940s in a case called United States v. Causby after a farmer brought a suit against the government over low-flying military planes' taking off and landing from a nearby airport. The planes, he said, forced him out of the chicken business -- and he wanted compensation.
The Court gave it to him -- and said that a property owner owns “at least as much of the space above the ground as he can occupy or use in connection with the land.�
But even then, the justices didn’t clearly define a precise aerial boundary for landowners -- leaving a gray area that Boggs is hoping to clear up for the burgeoning drone market.
“This industry is growing quickly -- and it’s to some extent being stifled by the legal uncertainty surrounding these issues,� said James Mackler, an attorney at Frost Brown Todd, who represents Boggs.
If tech companies are going to deliver goods to the yards of customers, there will need to be clarity on exactly where a drone can fly. Could a drone delivering a package to your neighbor fly over your yard at 50 feet? Or would it need to descend vertically from hundreds of feet in the air to avoid trespassing on your airspace?
Boggs is asking the court to rule he’s entitled to $1,500 to cover damages to the drone. But more importantly, he wants a judge to decide whether his drone was trespassing on the air over Merideth’s property or if it was flying within the jurisdiction of the federal government.
A complicating factor is that Boggs and Merideth tell different stories about the day in question. Boggs’ suit says the drone was approximately 200 feet above ground, a claim he has previously said was backed up by images captured by the craft.
But Merideth says it was much closer to his home. And when a local judge dismissed criminal charges against Merideth in October, she relied on multiple eyewitnesses who said the drone was flying below the trees.
In 2012, Congress tasked the FAA with integrating drones into America’s skies. The FAA is still finalizing these rules, which are expected to be wrapped up by June. Its proposed rules have little to say about property rights, though they recommend that commercial drones cannot be operated over a person not directly involved in the operation. Crafts flown by hobbyists such as Boggs are also not addressed.
Some argue the agency has the legal authority to address the privacy issues raised by drones. But the agency “does not consider privacy to be their role or expertise,� said University of Washington law professor Ryan Calo.
The FAA says it is part of a White House-ordered effort to develop best practices on privacy with other agencies, think-tanks and drone companies. But these talks will not produce hard and fast rules.
For now, everyday homeowners mostly have to depend on local laws to fend of drones. In some cases, homeowners could bring civil cases against the pilots of low flying drones, according to Calo. They may also be able to persuade local law enforcement to bring charges against the operators under existing trespass, nuisance or “peeping Tom� laws.
While the federal government has moved slowly to craft drone rules, 32 states have enacted their own laws or resolutions regarding the crafts, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. But the specifics vary across the country. And some states left it to local authorities to judge when drones are trespassing on people’s property.
Merideth says the day that Boggs’ drone — a DJI Phantom with a camera — flew by was actually the third time in 18 months he’d spotted that kind of craft over his neighborhood. He had called the police on previous occasions, he said, but gotten no help.
By the time Boggs’ drone flew over his land -- hovering after multiple passes, according to Merideth -- he was fed up.
“In my mind it wouldn’t have been any different had he been standing in my backyard with a video camera,� Merideth said.

[SREcklund]

Ever since the Industrial Revolution, technology has advanced faster and faster, and at some point outstripped society's ability to establish the norms required to support the technology. It might have been the first time a horseless carriage rumbled down some muddy main street, and onlookers realized they'd need to invent signals - quick. Today, the tech gets into the hands of the people, and they're left to their own to decide how best to use it, without the input from society that only time can provide. That's why you have insensitive bastards having conversations seemingly with themselves via their Bluetooth cell interface, and folks having to shoot drones out of the sky as they zoom in on their 15-yr-old daughter and her friends playing in the backyard pool ...

[SDR]

Gunpowder is arguably the most insidious invention of man. The Devil was on hand the day that genie was released from the bottle. Talk about "unfair advantage . . . !"

SDR

[Paul Ringstrom]

Of course the government's (FAA) first reaction is to require all drone owners to register their drone. Since it was reported that only 700,000 were given as Christmas presents this year that idea should certainly solve this problem once and for all.

[Roderick Grant]

Like guns, drones will perpetuate faster than any bureaucracy can keep up. The advocates of privacy (a word that dictionaries will soon label: obs.) will slow the process of dealing with the problem.

[Tom]

Wright anticipated drones in Broadacre! haha

[SDR]

No . . . those are giant mutant Uber-faeries (Lyft-bugs) with acorn bodies and killer-blades. Who knows what controls them . . .!

http://www.mediaarchitecture.at/archite ... lustration

SDR

[Reidy]

In The Wright Space, Grant Hildebrand maintains that the secret of Wright's houses is that they let the inhabitants look out over the view while people outside can't see in. Drones take this security away. If they get to be standard, putting that security back will be one of architecture's next challenges.

I see a * farce somewhere in this.

[SDR]

[spell it with spaces]

[Roderick Grant]

Not "IF they get standard," but "WHEN they get standard." Technology will not be constrained by the (weak) will of the people or the law. The change in drones of the future will not be to limit their ability to flout privacy concerns, but to violate them with impunity. Soon massive drones, such as are sold to the public at this time, will be replaced by tiny, hummingbird-sized drones that will flit about unnoticed, spying on all of us, perhaps competing with real hummingbirds at their feeders for fuel. Only Venetian blinds, properly adjusted, will keep their prying eyes out.

[RonMcCrea]

I think Frank Lloyd Wright would have welcomed drone photography and used it extensively.

He often had "bird's-eye" views of his early buildings drawn before the airplane was invented, using the talents of draftsmen like Emil Brodelle, who did memorable views of Taliesin I, Midway Gardens, and the Imperial Hotel; and Marion Mahony, who did the Cheney House and others. Glenda Korporaal, in her terrific new book, Making Magic: The Marion Mahony Griffin Story, suggests that Marion may have gotten her talent from her love of climbing to treetops and viewing the world from high branches as a girl.

The drone, like kite photography, is a great way to put architecture in its context, in its landscape, from an intimate, medium-high perspective, without the distortions of long-lens aerial photography from helicopters.

Here is an example which I was able to use (with permission) in my book on Taliesin I. This photo of Taliesin III was taken with a camera on kite operated by Madison photographer Craig Wilson in September, 2008. In lectures, I use it to make the point that Taliesin is part of a total composition by Wright, without which the buildings would lose much of their power.

At the very beginning, in Taliesin's photographic debut in the January, 1913, issue of Architectural Record, the editors admit that "Photographs giving an adequate conception of the layout of the house and grounds with their beautiful surroundings are impossible to procure." They say that only "the architect's drawings themselves show more comprehensively the arrangement of this estate as planned by Mr. Wright himself."



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[SDR]

No form of photography can capture architecture which hasn't been built yet. The building itself is the go-between which follows the drawn proposal and precedes the completed structure. As such, the two media are complementary but distinct, each taking its unique place in the process.

I have no doubt that Mr Wright would have delighted in seeing real-time aerial views of Taliesin, in all its variety; among other things it's an excellent aid to property maintenance. Aerial or birds-eye-view drawing has distinct advantages over photography which help explain our ongoing interest in proposal drawings long after their purpose has been accomplished -- assuming the project was completed, in fact. The architect can idealize the building in numerous ways, without any exaggeration of the forms and facts: trees that would obscure the view of the building can be selectively trimmed or eliminated, distracting elements of the surrounding environment can be minimized, etc etc.

Wright's early aerial perspective view of the house could be usefully compared to photographs like the very nice one above -- which shows from a new angle the various additions to the roofs of the residence, which nevertheless (no doubt by design) retains a single major ridge. Long gone are the several versions of the house-in-miniature which once capped the intersection between east-west and north-south reaches of roof . . .

Photographs of completed buildings can be accomplished in far less time than it takes to make a drawing (by any means). Aerial photography has the advantages claimed for it by Ron, above. My point would be that both pictorial means are of value, each in its own realm. The trend toward instant and universal communication continues, as has no doubt been predicted for decades if not for centuries. The Wright brothers made their first successful flight the year after the Willits house was built; the first known aerial photograph was taken in 1858 by a French balloonist. Kite photography seems like a very gentle and quiet precursor to drone photography -- if potentially as invasive ?

SDR