PART V - Does Amazon Prime avoid the “commercial” classification and why
penalize US farmers?
Example 3:
You can use a
drone to move a box from point to point without any kind of compensation, but
you cannot use a drone to deliver packages to people for a fee. Amazon.com is obviously the main issue here,
as Amazon would like to use drones to deliver packages to people. Here is a new angle, I’m a member of Amazon
Prime, so I get my packages delivered for free.
If Amazon delivers my packages for free, with a drone, is it
commercial? I would argue it is not, as
I would not be charged whether it arrives by UPS or drone, and I would much
prefer drone as it would get here in 10 minutes rather than 2 days.
Example 4:
You can use a
drone to survey a field of crops “grown for personal enjoyment”, but not as
part of a commercial farming operation.
This is, in my opinion, ludicrous.
Precision agriculture is extremely important for our country (and those
other countries that buy our exported agricultural products). Why put us at a competitive disadvantage
against those countries which regularly use drones to perform these functions?
So what really is “commercial use”?
Let’s begin with the FAA guidelines. FAA recently released a document that
included examples of what they considered “hobby” and “commercial” uses of
drones. Let’s look at these examples and
see what light they may shed on the subject.
Example 1: Flying a model aircraft at the local model
aircraft club is “hobby”, but receiving money for demonstrating aerobatics with
a model aircraft is “commercial”. OK,
but what about a “drone competition”, where everyone who enters has to pay a
$20 entry fee and the winner gets a grand prize of $200. Is the winner doing is “commercially”? Is the group putting on the event
“commercial” because they are taking money to have other people fly
drones? Is the result different if the
winner gets a free drone as a prize?
What about a free weekend at a local resort? Is this “commercial”? What if a major resort sponsored the event
and gave away a free weekend at their resort for the grand champion drone
flyer, but made all contestants agree that the resort could use their footage
they shot during the event. Does that
make the resort fall under “commercial use”?
I just attended
a drone conference in Las Vegas where each day the organizers drew names from a hat and
the winner won a free drone. The
organizers didn’t fly any drones but clearly used the lure of a free drone to
get attendees there. What if the
organizers had hosted a drone-flying exhibition as part of the conference, and
gave away a free drone as part of a raffle, would the “drone-flying” part of
the conference make it “commercial”?
