Genghis the Engineer wrote:Interesting thread.
You own certain rights to the airspace over your property - I'm pretty certain that includes control over photography, but not (above 50m for drones and above 150m for aeroplanes) air navigation rights.
Given the law over visual line of sight, in theory at least if a drone is there, there should be a fighting chance of spotting its operator. If they are legal, which they may not be.
If I was suffering this as a regular nuisance, I think I'd start to explore radio jamming technologies. I'm pretty certain that's illegal as well, but it would be far less dangerous to my neighbours, and if I then handed it into the local police station after accidentally standing on it, as having crashed into my garden, I think it would likely reduce repeat incidents markedly without any come-back on me.
G
Are you sureGtE? My very ancient memory from property law lectures is that the principle of cuius est solum eius est usque ad coelum et ad infernos applies insofar as the owner (or possibly occupier) can
reasonably enjoy the sky above the ground, ownership and rights being two separate things. That's how minerals can be extracted from under a property with neither notice nor permission.
That allows aircraft to pass over 'my' land but not to scrape along it in the space that I can occupy and enjoy (Buccaneer drivers take note). To me, and in the absence of any research of precedence at all
that means that a drone above the air that I can
reasonably enjoy is quite legally there. That could be quite low in aviating terms.
As we all know, photographs taken in and of a public place are quite legal, and I might reasonably say that a highish level photograph of your property is well within my rights as a drone operator, which for these purposes is no different from images freely available on Google Earth or from any professional using drones for work.
I don't know much about privacy law but I suspect that there might be little privacy by right in a back garden, ie don't sunbathe naked if you don't want drones to take naked photos of you. There is probably an implied right to be able to enjoy your land without interference from a drone regularly buzzing you so it might have more legal protection on the interference and frequency than the act itself. I suppose we're in the hands of a judge to decide what's an unreasonable amount of buzzing.
Where's a proper lawyer when you need them ^^ that is probably cobblers.
... and shooting at aircraft covered by the ANO is a really bad idea.
Middle East Peace Expert. Military strategist. Former economist and epidemiologist.
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