Originally Posted by
aymodeler
When has ignorance of the law ever been a valid legal defense?
It hasn't. But the reality is, it's much easier to prosecute an offense when you don't have to rely on that - but can instead turn to explicit acknowledgement of rule. Like these explicit questions and answers.
FAA and other stakeholders are playing the long game. It's not impossible that in the not too distant future, some of those commercial drones flying around at not a lot higher than 400 feet, will be able to record day time and location information using RemoteID receivers. While probably not enough to prosecute, it will create data showing "hot spots" of non-compliance. If those are AMA sanctioned events, AMA could find itself standing in front of the body that regulates their activity trying to explain their indefensible policy. While their safety code rule says members should follow FAA rules, the AMA does not enforce that rule! See the problem?
Similarly, there are individuals and clubs out there that feel it's their "right" to overfly others' property - again, contrary to AMA rules that say not to overfly unprotected property and people. It'll be easy to create the legal argument against them. As for the legal They took the test, the test says follow the rules of the CBO, the CBO says not to overfly, and you did it anyway. Now say CDs stand by and do nothing? As "agents of the AMA," then AMA itself is now implicated. Not saying any of this is automatic, nor that residents will win, but their chances go way up (IMO). Those neighbors will use zoning and other tools to shut down clubs.
Not unlike the problem of encroachment around civilian airports. The record is full of places where airfields existed for decades before people moved in, but the airfield either ends up changing ops or closing entirely. Everytime one of those fields under encroachment pressure has a pilot that doesn't fly the pattern correctly, it hands the opponents the stick to beat them. Fortunately, the solution is easy. Individuals and clubs that follow the rules, to the letter, won't have problems. AMA would be wise to take obvious steps to ensure compliance, like conditioning insurance coverage on compliance with AMA and FAA, but they won't. So it's not IF there's more problems and lost fields, it's just when.