LIGHTS, CAMERAS, DRONES

News Coverage Pirker's case became a cause célèbre for photographers, journalists, and any number of industries that see the public benefits of drones, or "unmanned aircraft systems" (UAS)-the term insiders and lawmakers prefer because "drone" conjures up images of Middle East warfare. In language we'll likely see when the first drone-based civil privacy litigation hits the dockets, she characterized the photographer's conduct as "direct[ing] a ffying object into a police-restricted area, where it proceeded to hover over the site of a major motor vehicle accident and the responding officers within it, effectively trespassing onto an active crime scene." In the meanwhile, what you are more likely to see are the deployments of this wonderful new technology for the everyone's benefit, such as the following: * emergency workers airlifting medicines to more needy people in more remote regions; * universities and environmental groups harvesting higher-resolution evidence of global warming; * energy companies better detecting trouble spots along Arctic pipelines; ? real estate agents posting threedimensional views of the retirement property you are looking to buy; ? conservationists helping us feel what it's really 1 ike to roam among a herd of endangered wildlife; * the Golf Channel providing a whole new perspective with hole-by-hole drone coverage.