Drone Pilot Who Ruined the FAA’s 2014 Has Settled His Case

(Source: motherboard.vice.com)  

For a good few months last year, ​commercial drones were completely legal and entirely unregulated, thanks in no small part to the persistent legal battle fought by a Swiss guy and his lawyer. Today, that legal battle is over—the Federal Aviation Administration and Raphael Pirker have decided to settle, scoring the agency what has probably been the hardest and most frustrating $1,100 it has ever earned.

The case revolves around Pirker getting paid what he calls “pocket money” for ​filming an advertisement at the University of Virginia with his drone. The FAA caught word of the flight, in which Pirker used a couple-pound foam drone and hurt no one, and decided to fine him $10,000. Pirker ​hired a lawyer named Brendan Schulman and fought the case, eventually beating the FAA.

Pirker “does not admit to any allegation of fact or law herein, and by not contesting this Amended Order of Assessment is resolving the matter solely to avoid the expense of litigation,” the settlement reads. In other words, this just goes away, because both the FAA and Pirker are tired of it.

The original decision, however, opened the floodgates for drone enthusiasts everywhere: The ​judge decided that drones were not “aircraft” and therefore any use of them was essentially unregulated by the FAA. That ​decision was overturned in November by an appeals court, but for a good eight months there, the FAA was virtually powerless to do much of anything about people who flew drones commercially.

Last fall, the FAA changed the rules of the game, however (without public input), ​making all commercial drone flights illegal using a new legal mechanism. At that point, Pirker decided that the case was no longer really worth fighting. The case had been referred to a lower court to determine exactly what a “reckless” flight with a drone looks like.

“With the recent reinterpretation, even a win wouldn’t have any real world merit,” Pirker told me from Hong Kong, where he lives. “Even if we had won the case, [Schulman] pointed out it wouldn’t have any kind of significance. It was more of an economic decision—just wanted to get out of this mess as best as I can.”

And so, Pirker is out after getting his fine reduced from $10,000 to $1,100. Under the terms of the deal, he will not admit fault and we’re still sort of left with no idea as to what constitutes a reckless flight.

“The FAA had some general allegations in the complaint, like ‘flying close to the ground’ or ‘at treetop level’ or ‘close to a railway line,'” Pirker said. “It’s stuff that everybody is doing, and there was some concern that this could then be used as a precedent. All of these charges were dropped as part of the settlement deal.”

Schulman told me, however, that had the pair decided to continue fighting the case, the court would have eventually decided that flying a foam, five-pound drone isn’t reckless at all.

“We were prepared to defend the case on its merits for recklessness,” Schulman told me. “The regulation requires endangerment of life or the property of another. If they found the risk was giving someone a scratch, there’s certainly the possibility it would have established that flying a styrofoam model in and of itself doesn’t pose the kind of danger to people necessary to meet the regulatory standard.”

Now, we won’t know either way.

Over the past few months, Pirker has become something of a polarizing character in the drone world: Some originally looked at him as a hero for sticking it to the FAA. Others argue that he baited the FAA by filming viral videos of Manhattan, and that his videos brought so much publicity to what had been a rather niche hobby, making it so large that the FAA couldn’t ignore it anymore.

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