A Kentucky man shot down a drone and/or quadcopter as some people are calling it while it was hovering over his backyard.
Quote:
By Ars Techincia The way William Merideth sees it, it’s pretty clear-cut: a drone flying over his backyard was a well-defined invasion of privacy, analogous to a physical trespassing.
Not knowing who owned it, the Kentucky man took out his shotgun and fired three blasts of Number 8 birdshot to take the drone out.
"It was just right there," he told Ars. "It was hovering, I would never have shot it if it was flying. When he came down with a video camera right over my back deck, that's not going to work. I know they're neat little vehicles, but one of those uses shouldn’t be flying into people's yards and videotaping."
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Merideth was later arrested on the charges of criminal mischief and wanton endangerment.
Now the question is, is what Merideth did right or wrong? Personally I would agree with what he did, that using a drone/quadcopter is such a manner is improper and an invasion of privacy seeing as how the owner of the drone didn't seek Merideth's permission to use his drone in or around Merideth's property. On the other hand it's also impossible to know, without asking what purpose the owner of the drone was using it for. Was he simply flying it around taking videos and photos, or was he using it to case the joint? Here is a link to the article itself:
http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/ken...ard/ar-AAdGg2x
As drones, or quadcopters or whatever you care to call them are rapidly becoming more and more popular there is of course going to be problems caused by those who use them, most notably their use around commercial airports where they are a hazard to all types of aircraft and in the case of the wildfires in California where one fire jumped the highway and burned some 21 vehicles, firefighting planes and helicopter where unable to fight the fires because of drones in the area. There have also been some instances of drones being used to smuggle contraband into prisons. It's only a matter of time before legislation is passed governing the usage of these machines. I also have a second question, what do you think would be some common sense laws regarding the use of drones?