Have you actually watched Italian television?

Wouldn't it just be easier to get the British government out of the news and entertainment businesses?

In the US, yes. It makes no difference if it's a 50-pound Octo carrying a Red Epic shooting a Mercedes commercial, or a 15-gram kid's toy. In places like all of the US's national parkland, rivers, and coasts administered by the Park Service, they are all 100% banned. Likewise for 30 miles around Washington DC, without any regard to size or range. And no, it's not about "drones," it's about all RC (or autonomous) flying contraptions of any type or size, period. And they're just getting started.

Not just the open source ones, either.

Right. Trained and licensed just like the millions of car drivers around you, who area also in their cars, with license plates that can be identified. That explains why we have so many more drone injuries and deaths than we do car-related injuries and deaths. Well, actually, it doesn't. Manufacturers are selling hundreds of thousands of small multirotors every month, and the number of deaths is ... zero. As opposed to thousands killed by licensed, tagged, trained, on-board car drivers. Now that you're re-thinking this, I'm sure you're going to be looking for ways to ban cars from driving past your property ... because any one of those cars could hop the curb and smash right into your house. This MUST be banned.

And that changes your privacy rights how, exactly? The FAA has nothing whatsoever to do with that.

Regardless: are you comfortable that none of the millions of trained, state-certified car drivers all around you will hurt you? Why not?

Sure, other than the part where that's pure fantasy on your part, and it's nothing like that at all in real life. And if someone IS behaving that badly in a real and public way, there are already a jillion statutes in place to make them stop, or make them pay for being jerks to other people. And yet, untold thousands of these devices are being sold every month - how many ACTUAL cases of anything even approaching what you're describing actually occur? Especially compared to the typical street harassment you're describing, which is as old as time? Some perspective here, please.

Sure, other than the fact that shooting at any aircraft - manned or otherwise - is a federal felony.

Of course you also think that a person flying a Cessna at a 1000 feet should have to check with every landowner below his flight path, too, right? No?

Why? Be very, very specific.

So you're also in favor of banning park tourists from using bicycles, right? Because far more people are injured and even killed in bike/pedestrian collisions every year than by 3-pound plastic toy multirotors. And you're probably also in favor of banning the noisy, smelly, routinely lethal motor vehicles that people use to get to and from those public spaces, right? Because those things - unlike drones - actually are involved in thousands of deaths every year.

Yeah, those tourists getting smashed in the head by drones - that's been a real problem. Other than the fact that I'll bet you can't cite actual cases of such things happening that come even CLOSE to the number of people who are killed in motor vehicle accidents going to, moving within, and leaving public spaces.

You don't like the noise? How about you make arrangements to make sure that my trip to a public space is in no way interrupted by screaming kids, barking dogs, music being played from rolled-down car windows, and the like? Thanks.

That's awesome. I think it would also be great to never have to worry about you sneezing, or having a stroke, or being momentarily distracted, or having a mechanical failure as you drive your car to wherever you fly your non-crap drones. Because unlike the countless deaths we're seeing by drones (let's see... essentially none whatsoever despite untold hundreds of thousands, even millions in use), people are actually killed for real dead in car accidents every single day.

Cars ARE DANGEROUS when they are large enough to carry self righteous operators of non-crap drones. A pedestrian collision at even 5mph could be LETHAL.

See how this works? The Nanny State pendulum can swing in several directions.

You also have an expectation of not being bitten by a dog, hit by a car, run into by a person on a bicycle or using rollerblades. New Zealand should definitely make sure that nobody be allowed to drive a car to a public space, just in case. Or ride a bicycle - think of what might happen! And kids running around - total tripping hazards, so definitely no children allowed out of the house, anywhere.

There, feeling more rational now? No? Ah.

Oh, wait, you didn't need to pass a test for that.

I'm just trying to think how that would have been possible. I think back then there was a medical exception you could plead for. I didn't. I passed the 20 WPM test fair and square and got K6BP as a vanity call, long before there was any way to get that call without passing a 20 WPM test.

Unfortunately, ARRL did fight to keep those code speeds in place, and to keep code requirements, for the last several decades that I know of and probably continuously since 1936. Of course there was all of the regulation around incentive licensing, where code speeds were given a primary role. Just a few years ago, they sent Rod Stafford to the final IARU meeting on the code issue with one mission: preventing an international vote for removal of S25.5 . They lost.

I am not blaming this on ARRL staff and officers. Many of them have privately told me of their support, including some directors and their First VP, now SK. It's the membership that has been the problem.

I am having a lot of trouble believing the government agency and NGO thing, as well. I talked with some corporate emergency managers as part of my opposition to the encryption proceeding (we won that too, by the way, and I dragged an unwilling ARRL, who had said they would not comment, into the fight). Big hospitals, etc.

What I got from the corporate folks was that their management was resistant to using Radio Amateurs regardless of what the law was. Not that they were chomping at the bit waiting to be able to carry HIPAA-protected emergency information via encrypted Amateur radio. Indeed, if you read the encryption proceeding, public agencies and corporations hardly commented at all. That point was made very clearly in FCC's statement - the agencies that were theorized by Amateurs to want encryption didn't show any interest in the proceeding.

So, I am having trouble believing that the federal agency and NGO thing is real because of that.