[breeze_em_out]

Is this appropriate for businesses to be doing?

I mean, you don't see Ford putting out bounties on drunk hit'n'run drivers, and that's something that's cost thousands of lives.

How is this type of McCarthy PR acceptable?

DJI customers, what are your thoughts on this?

[jenamety]

> Is this appropriate for businesses to be doing?

Ethically yes

From a business standpoint yes:

If they are concerned about 300 families from passengers from a stricken airliner coming after them for billions, then yes, yes it is.

If they are concerned about the FAA restricting drone use altogether, then yes. (they've already required drones be registered. If they're aircraft that cant be operated safely then FAA can ground them all, and much of the world follows our FAA's rulings)

A civilian UAS & manned aircraft collision resulting in loss of life is statistically inevitable. How DJI fares in court by showing it exhausted all means to prevent their products from doing harm when the unfortunate does occur, is something they can be proactive with.

[garethsprice]

Guessing that China's government regulation of drones is a lot more relaxed than the US, in which case it becomes a market-driven approach - it's bad PR to have drones disrupting flights, so the business is investing private capital to prevent further incidents harming public perception of drones until the law can catch up.

Ford doesn't need to put out bounties because there's adequate regulation to punish drunk drivers. However, in the early days of motoring there was definitely private investment into shaping the discussion around cars - jaywalking was invented by automakers and heavily promoted to shift the role of roads from being primarily for pedestrians to primarily for cars: https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2012/04/invention-jay...

[moftz]

No one complains about cars and wants to restrict them the same way drones are treated. DJI has an interest in making sure that their drones follow the law. The entire drone industry and their lawful users also have an interest in making sure that no one is giving drone pilots a bad reputation. DJI is part of this and wants to spend their money to make sure that people know that unlawful flights are not tolerated by any drone users. I don't think anyone would be complaining if Ford put out rewards for information on hit'n'run drivers.

[vkou]

Not quite - we restrict cars even more then we restrict drones.

They also happen to be necessary to the operation of our society. Drones are little more then toys. If all drones were grounded tomorrow, life would go on. If all cars stopped tomorrow, half the country would starve to death by June.

[matthewmacleod]

I'm not really sure I understand the problem here. If anything, it seems like a little bit of corporate responsibility (in a broad sense) is a good thing, no?