Other than a few blurbs on Twitter, I haven’t had much to say about the pending rules on drone registration, primarily because it was unclear to me just how it could work, especially vis a vis hobbyists.  And it seemed especially unlikely to achieve the putative goal of allowing authorities to trace drones that endanger other aircraft back to their owners.

As I have said in the past, where the burden imposed by a regulation significantly outweighs the chance of getting caught, the likely result will be a lot of non-compliance.  And, as with many things, the people who do comply are unlikely to be the people that you need to worry about.

But I also know some of the stakeholders who participated in crafting the rule, and I wanted to wait and give them the benefit of the doubt.  They were given an enormous task, and very little time to come up with a solution.

Following a breakneck rule-making timeline, the interim final rule on drone registration has now been published.  It goes into effect next Monday.