Interesting discussion, and is nearly the same on every forum. It's a total mess. Personally I think this whole thing has little to do with safety and much more to do with securing the NAS for commercial use of drones. Not the 333 guys, they will be crushed too. It's the Amazons of the air that will win the day then eventually we hobbyists and small time commercial operators will be so regulated, required to jump through so many hoops, pay out a lot of money for insurance and all the rest, it won't be worth it. Why do I say this has little to do with safety? Because while you, me and countless others are trying to figure out the rules, operate in a responsible manner like we always have, and arguing about it, the people that don't give a rat's behind about rules will still fly unabated with no conscience. For them there are already laws made for.
Has anyone entertained the notion that what the FAA has done is completely illegal per section 336? John Taylor is getting his day in court this month, yet not one model aircraft mfr nor the AMA is supporting his effort. It's pretty clear to me the reason for that is they are all clamoring to get in bed with FAA hoping to receive whatever scraps the bureaucrats leave them.
Does anyone really believe DJI spontaneously on their own came up with the GEO system and it just happened to be after Christmas? If nobody has been paying attention, when you log in to get authorization there are a whole lot of places the application is connecting to outside of what is needed to make the program work. In any other program that would be called malware and people would be scrubbing their pc's of every last remnant of it.
February 19 is approaching and I have not registered will not until forced to in order to avoid bankruptcy and prison time (see 8th Amendment). In fact, if it becomes too burdensome and causes too much anxiety, I may just quit the hobby again for good this time.
BTW, I live in the country but am surrounded by 4 "airports" that according to FAA's B4UFLY app I must contact the operator of my intent to fly. For 35 years we RC guys have been flying illegally and didn't know it. These are ma and pa grass strips with no tower and all but one not used, and that one for my friend's ultra light It's surpassed the point of insanity. IMO this is largely a big city problem and should be addressed as such, but like every other government solution it's a one-size-fits-all top down iron fisted mandate.