Major news outlets call the FAA’s drone restrictions a violation of the First Amendment
You may have heard about farmers, pilots and even real estate agents calling on the Federal Aviation Administration to allow the use of commercial drones in U.S. airspace. But now some of the nation's largest newspaper companies — The Washington Post, the New York Times, the Associated Press and Gannett, among others — are saying the FAA is restricting free speech by not allowing drones to fly.
The news organizations argue that banning the use of drones amounts to a First Amendment violation, according to court documents filed this week in the case of a filmmaker who was fined by the FAA for using a drone to film an ad.
"This overly broad policy," the brief reads, "implemented through a patchwork of regulatory and policy statements and an ad hoc cease-and-desist enforcement process, has an impermissible chilling effect on the First Amendment newsgathering rights of journalists."
The media organizations filed the brief in support of Raphael Pirker, who was fined $10,000 by the agency for using a drone to shoot a commercial at the University of Virginia. A federal judge threw out the FAA's case in March, encouraging drone advocates, but the FAA is continuing to fight.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2014/05/07/major-news-outlets-call-the-faas-drone-restrictions-a-violation-of-the-first-amendment/
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