The big drone thread was germane to some of our current dinner-time discussions, but rather than post in it,
I'd rather narrow the issue.  Thread went a bit off the rails, anyways, lol.

We run a large CAFO in central NC, 5000 head of cattle with all the risks, manure, permits, and headaches that entails.
If you cotton to the general public's paradigm, CAFOs are evil factory farms hell bent on ruining the planet - look it up.

In 2015 the NC Legislature passed an ag-gag bill (H405) that states in part:

Any person who gains access to the nonpublic areas of another's premises and engages in an act that exceeds
the persons authority to enter those areas is liable to the owner or  operator  of  the  premises  for  any  damages  sustained.
For  the  purposes  of  this  section, nonpublic areas shall mean those areas not accessible to or not intended to be
accessed by the general public.

For the purposes of this section, acts that exceed a person's authority to enter the nonpublic areas of another's
premises include, but are not limited to, the following:

(3) Knowingly or intentionally placing on the employer's premises an unattended camera or electronic surveillance device
and using that device to record images or data.


All entries here are posted "no camera's" or "no filming".  Employees are made aware of the policy at hiring.  We have a
local "riverkeepers" group that's not quite full-on radical - but as more and more hippies join the fight the writing's on the wall...

This prick, for example


All of that considered, I contend a drone is as significant a threat as a biped with a camera, and should be grounded.
Our attorney contends I can no more ground the drone than I can shoot the trespasser; and have to wait until demonstrable
damage is done... Case law should be along shortly, but does the ag-gag bill end any "there's no law against it" defense?

What say you?  Eliminate the threat or wait for the facebook video that sinks a family farm?

*In before the "if you're not doing anything wrong why worry about it?" - fuck off, everything I do is wrong by hippy standards.

**I've done my best to break the wall of text, I know it's blocky, so here's some awesome tits:

You're in a rough spot.  I think if I were you I might consider hanging up some strategically placed netting.

You know, for pigeons.

ETA: Nice tits.  50,000 lbs or better?

12 gauge

Salvo

See there, that was easy, now wasn't it?

Don't know if this will help, but contact your local FAA Flight Standards District Office (FSDO). They have law enforcement authority in some of these matters.

Personally, I would not shoot at someone else's drone. It seems to cause a fair amount of expense and unnecessary intrusion of The Man into your life.  
OTOH, I'd seriously consider investing in a few relatively cheap, simple drones to fly cover when the hippy drone appears.
Hopefully, they wouldn't accidentally ram and severely damage or destroy the offending hippie drone. Oooops, sorry 'bout that, patchouli-boy.

Sonderkommando Elbe FTW

Accidentally crash your drone into theirs while monitoring the interloper.

Does your state consider the air above property as belonging to the property owner?

Get your own large drone.  Dangle long tangling paracord from it.

Intercept.

netting - could be cost-prohibitive on 1500 acres.

tits - dunno, not mine, would bet not 50k tho.  Too pretty to work hard IMO



Mirrors fed regs AFAIK, now working on NC HB 446 - Permits via DOT, looks 'tarded and only applies to "commercial" drones
http://www.ncleg.net/Sessions/2015/Bills/Senate/PDF/S446v6.pdf

The issue, and my contention, is that the hippy riverkeeper drones go beyond invasion of privacy and approach eco-terrorism...
The ground under my feet is firmer than for, say, sunbathing teenage daughters, no?

I don't know.    The way I understand it, the FAA does not think the air above a property belongs to a land owner.
The law you stated said something about putting a camera on the property.  In the air above would not be on the property.

What an udder predicament.

Probably an accurate interpretation I guess, troublesome tho... Thanks

Would a person flying a drone not easily fit these two below definitions?

1. Any person who gains access to nonpublic areas
2. Knowingly or intentionally placing on the employer's premises an unattended camera or electronic surveillance device ......

I think the case would be a slam dunk, of course you'd have to prove ownership, but if they're under FAA minimum specified altitudes then isn't that considered on your property?

For fucks sake, flying a drone over your property is not terrorism.

What damage will you claim from a drone flying over head?

 
#1 would be problematic as they would argue that a drone is not a "person".

 
The thing is, a regular manned airplane could fly over and take the same pictures/video.


For some reason people are more comfortable with a real person spying on them than a robot doing exactly the same thing.

This. It's just as much your air space to use as his. I'd buy my kids drones, model airplanes, kites, helium balloons, etc. Then they have to obtain permission to enter your property to retrieve the drone. All submissions should be notarized and submitted in triplicate to the law office of Dewey, Cheatum and Howe in Hoboken, NJ. It should take 4 to 6 weeks to process your request.

Fucking cows are clumsy as hell too, they trample everything.

Net Gun




And that commercial drone thing will help you.    FAA says you cannot shoot down commercial aircraft.   So... you can either shoot their asses down, or they cant be above your shit.

Eh I'm with OP. Firmly in the camp of intentionally flying a drone onto my property = trespassing.

No offense to the drone flyers. But its just like someone shooting onto my property. Or the guy that sets his tree stand up every year and "forgets" where the double fenced property line is every year during deer season.

As much as I'm a hunter, its still illegal.

As much as I'm a shooter, its still illegal.


Do it once, nice verbal warning. Do it twice, stern warning with a call to the local LE. Do it three times. Trespassing charge. (Yes. I did this same thing with the hunter who puts his stand up on my property.)

From the text you quoted, you're SOL. A drone is not unattended.

When someone does that and files harassment complaints with regulatory agencies, the costs can be very, very high.

Scientists capture birds with net cannons

How about tethered balloons with nets, fishing line, etc hanging from them. You wouldn't really be shooting anything down then.

What?

The Ag-Gag law says "liable to the owner or operator of the premises for any damages sustained.".

How does a drone cause damage, short of it crashing and fucking something up?

From the article linked in the OP, I'm not sure that the ecoNazi would actually be over OP's farm:
"He’s looking at aerial drones in the $5,000 to $7,000 price range, models that would allow him to monitor farms from a safe distance, without trespassing, while being equipped with cameras powerful enough to capture high-definition images. “The increased range is what’s most important to me,” he added. “I’m not going to be violating the law with this investigation, so I need to be on public property, where I’m stationed, but it has to have a range to cover the scope of the land.”
Unless I'm missing something (quite possible), it sounds like he's planning to stand on public property, have his drone hover over public property, and point its hi-res camera onto private property. If the hippiedrone never crosses the property line, it's kinda hard to make a case for physically trespassing. Nor would barrage balloons, nets, etc. work.  

The ability to cover 1500 acres would require some really high-end cameras. If that expensive camera were to get fried by some sort of powerful single-wavelength burst of light, or an RC aircraft or another drone were to accidentally have a mid-air collision with it, the hippies would be out some serious $$$. They would naturally sue OP (not that they'd win), so active measures might be cost-prohibitive, no matter how viscerally satisfying they are.

Beat the camera, not the vehicle. A couple of defensive drones mounting xenon strobes to get in the hippiedrone's face might work. Those who are more tech-savvy will have better ideas.

You left out "approach", and "eco" - why is that?

Also curious, how many EPA regulated CAFO's are there in MA?
Let's have a look

The flying is not the issue, no damage at all - the recording, photographing is the issue...
pretty easy for peta/HSUS to wreck my reputation and my customers to move on to another grower.
They've made a habit of doing it from the ground, they'll soon be doing it from the air.

I think you're probably a recreational drone user, and I've got no problem at all with the flying part,
would gladly let one recreate here.  The thing that seems at odds with common sense is that if you're
legally barred from filming from the ground, how is it ok to do so from 50'?

Plenty of the things we do here taken out of context would look evil.  We shoot cattle in the head, sure.
After they broke a leg and there's no alternative.  

We have cattle hock deep in manure, sure.  After a 4" rainstorm and only in the 15 feet of lane between
the feed bunk and the pasture.  

We hang cattle from a chain on hip lifts with a payloader, sure. After a hard calving and just long enough
to get them in a more comfortable sling that we hope will help them become ambulatory after a day or so.

The picture, doesn't always tell the story...

Not trying to be dickish here, genuinely trying to do the right thing while waiting for a test case.

You need a battalion of poo flinging trebuchets manned by 2000 monkeys.

Don't understand. If you fly a drone around here and record any video or take any pictures of someone else's property or persons without permission you've committed a crime. Dude just got convicted of it the other day.

Because the 'eco' part is pretty meaningless, terrorism is terrorism, the reason for it matters little in this context. You haven't even alluded to any acts of terrorism, other than filming via drone, which isn't terrorism.

I have no drone.

Whats the difference between 50/500/5000'?

In the end, the pictures used to create slander/libel against you don't even need to be of your ranch, this will solve non of your problems.

Benelli M2 with steel bird shot.

Bag with LOTS more Steel bird shot.

Cleared HOT!!!!!

So basically your industry has already bought some laws to protect you, and now you want more regulations to protect you because what you do tends to really disgust people off when they see it up close?