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DJI ban passes the House and moves on to the Senate

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Re: DJI ban passes the House and moves on to the Senate

#21

Post by unethical_ban »

ganoushoreilly wrote: post #12
sofixa wrote: post #3

"free market". Unless there's something better than what our own companies can do (Bombardier C-Series jets, DJI drones, BYD Electric Vehicles), then protectionism. Also, I have to say that I find it very weird that random unrelated legislation can be in the same "act".

When companies receive outsized state subsidies that allow them to undercut the markets, it's not an apples for apples comparison. As for the unrelated legislation, I agree. Too many things are tacked on / added on. NO ONE is reading these things in complete given that sometimes they receive the full 1k pages hours before the vote. The other issue is the number of things funded that shouldn't be in general but that's…

If the US unfree market for automobiles (hello 2008) can't compete with Chinese state sponsored EVs, should we not do state subsidized EV and battery development here? Isn't electric transport that important?

If the problem is privacy, why don't we legislate privacy instead of banning apps and banning items?

My conspiracy theory would be that the US government doesn't want the citizen to have effective drones for surveillance and recon in the event of civil conflict. They want a Killswitch. (Totally crackpot but it sounds believable).

Re: DJI ban passes the House and moves on to the Senate

#22

Post by nacs »

Havoc wrote: post #7

Seems a bit pointless banning the market leader?

Yes this is a strange one.

There is no viable competitor to DJI for consumers when it comes to the software side especially -- DJI software is miles ahead of the other drone producers (on-drone and their mobile apps).

Re: DJI ban passes the House and moves on to the Senate

#23

Post by mc32 »

itsacodething wrote: post #19
gwbas1c wrote: post #11

What is DJI, why is it being banned, and why should the general public care about this? (In all seriousness, nothing I've read about "DJI" even explains the basics of the issue.)

If you want to know why the US would have interest in limiting the growth of DJI look no further then Ukraine and the impact drones have on the war. The US wants to encourage domestic drone manufacturing by eliminating the largest Chinese manufacturer as an option.

They have Skydio for that. There is no profit in consumer-oriented drones. The money is in lower volume professional & semi-professional use drones. You cannot compete with China even if we annexed Mexico for cheap labor in order to manufacture high volume low profit drones.

Re: DJI ban passes the House and moves on to the Senate

#24

Post by flutas »

burnte wrote: post #14
Zealotux wrote: post #8

Naive question: what prevents Americans from simply buying Dji products in Canada? It's a physical product, so banning it like TikTok or big vehicles is impossible, or am I missing something?

Since the control apps tap into GPS so they know when you're in a restricted zone, the gov't could simply make them mark all of the US as a restricted zone and the drone will never fly. I have one, I'm not happy about this.

I'm going back to the first gen mavic here in memory, but...

Didn't they run Android, and you could root them to remove the no fly zones?

Re: DJI ban passes the House and moves on to the Senate

#25

Post by empath75 »

gwbas1c wrote: post #11

What is DJI, why is it being banned, and why should the general public care about this? (In all seriousness, nothing I've read about "DJI" even explains the basics of the issue.)

Drones are national security issues for two reasons -- one is that they could be used for surveillance domestically (similar problem with tik tok) and secondarily drones are now core warfare technology and the US has offshored so much of it's manufacturing capacity (not just for drones, but for all electronics) that the US is at real risk of losing any conflict with china because our supply chains will be absolutely wrecked if China cuts us off, so the US is trying to encourage more domestic production. I think China cutting off exports to the US would be way more devastating to the US economy than the US cutting Russia off from the world banking system was to Russia.

Re: DJI ban passes the House and moves on to the Senate

#26

Post by itsoktocry »

Zealotux wrote: post #8

Naive question: what prevents Americans from simply buying Dji products in Canada? It's a physical product, so banning it like TikTok or big vehicles is impossible, or am I missing something?

>what prevents Americans from simply buying Dji products in Canada?

Because if you choose to do this, and it's against the law, you open yourself up to sanctions and punishment?

Re: DJI ban passes the House and moves on to the Senate

#27

Post by Velofellow »

neilv wrote: post #18
neilv wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Oof, perhaps time to stock up if you rely on this equipment. (I didn't read the bill, but based on the article alone...) Looks like it's a tentative ban on usage , not sale nor ownership. And currently with no "pre-ban" grandfathering-in, nor compensation for US people who'd be affected by the ban (e.g., investments in equipment, operations disrupted, migration costs).

One measure that would be interesting: a buyback of banned DJI gear, issuing vouchers that can be spent with non-disapproved drone brands. That might help make DJI owners whole, and consistent with some of the presumed goals behind banning use of DJI. Though it's spending taxpayer money.

The problem from my perspective, running a small DJI fleet in Civil Engineering, is that there are few comparative turnkey options from non-disapproved drone brands that actually compete with what I'm using now. The ones that could, are drastically more expensive.

From my understanding / research, the approved suppliers are largely focusing on the LE, Military markets.

Current list of cleared UAS https://www.diu.mil/blue-uas-cleared-list

Re: DJI ban passes the House and moves on to the Senate

#28

Post by henvic »

DJI is, by far, the best drone equipment brand for photography, industrial usage, etc.

It's disheartening to witness the US embracing protectionism for high-tech. If the United States does this, it might as well join the European Union's decadence in killing tech startups by stifling the competitiveness of their market...

Re: DJI ban passes the House and moves on to the Senate

#29

Post by mrandish »

This is so misguided it's breathtaking. Even if one buys into the supposed "harm" it's apparently trying to address, by targeting a specific corporate entity the proposed legislation won't do anything meaningful toward those ends. But it will confuse the market and hurt U.S. hobbyist consumers while being largely unenforceable anyway.

It's one of those things that's just so dumb you assume it's only congressional election year virtue signaling designed to get some headlines and then be quietly negotiated away during 'reconciliation', yet congressional processes are so dysfunctional there's always a risk it accidentally becomes law.

Re: DJI ban passes the House and moves on to the Senate

#30

Post by alephnerd »

Zealotux wrote: post #8

Naive question: what prevents Americans from simply buying Dji products in Canada? It's a physical product, so banning it like TikTok or big vehicles is impossible, or am I missing something?

> what prevents Americans from simply buying Dji products in Canada

Canada has significant regulations around purchasing and operation of drones [0]

[0] - https://www.gazette.gc.ca/rp-pr/p1/2017/2017-07-15/html/reg2...

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