Newbie

[Bobcatmo]

So in TX if your flying lets say in a public park and you fly over some farmland or a neighborhood that's over a treeline while your recording, you've broken the law??

I did download the app and it is a big help with knowing whether or not you are too close to an active airfield. It is illegal to fly withing 5 miles without notifying them, usually a simple phone call will cover your butt.

My house is about 3 miles from an active field....I normally use the app to drive out of the range and keep it under 400'. As far as the farmland or neighbor hood you will need to look at the regulations.

Know Before You Fly

 

[Hickeroar]

So in TX if your flying lets say in a public park and you fly over some farmland or a neighborhood that's over a treeline while your recording, you've broken the law??

It's a gray area mainly because the verbiage is kinda weird.

Summary and Analysis of the Texas Drone Law

(A) Illegal to to use unmanned aircraft to capture an image of a person or private property with the intent to conduct surveillance of that person or property.
(C) defense if the person has destroyed the image:
(1) as soon as the person knows the image was captured in violation, and
(2) without distributing to image.
(F) two year time limit to bring civil action.

The weird thing is this: If you are not intending to conduct surveillance of that person or property, then C would seem not to apply. You can't accidentally-intentionally conduct surveillance....which implies that "intent" isn't necessarily required in order to be in violation.

So either you're allowed to capture property if you're not intentionally surveilling that particular property....or you're not allowed to capture the property at all. I'm not sure how exactly to take the law, but I've been advised by other drone pilots in Texas that it may be illegal to capture anyone's private property at all.

For myself, I generally figure if I'm capturing a landscape and someone's property is captured at a distance, and isn't the focal point of the vidcap, then I'm probably OK. However, if I fly directly over someone's property and capture their back yard or something, i dump that video just to be on the safe side.

 

[WilliamM]

Lawyers write these things, and it takes one to read and understand them. It does look as though its just a civil action, and not criminal. If that's the case than only the property owner would be trying to track you down and not the law. What's the chance that a property owner going to see their house in a video you posted. That would also mean any skyline views of a city or town someone flims would be actionable ? Someone has to own those buildings. But is that surveillance intent? (that's the odd part).

 

[Bobcatmo]

I think if you are just flying around "intent" is going to be hard to prove

 

[Hickeroar]

I think if you are just flying around "intent" is going to be hard to prove

It seems to me they could argue that just videoing is intent, because your intent is to shoot video that has their property in it. I hate legalese.

 

[Bobcatmo]