Comercial flights, legal or not?

[Mihnea de Vries]

Does anybody have a list of countries where flying multirotors for business is illegal?
What exactly is not legal?
Is there a ceiling limit or something, like in airspace classes from in civil aviation ?
I there a limit on weight?
Is this law applicable to all land, public an private?

For example, i own a film production company and i fly my multirotor for a corporate film scene over client property. Is this considered commercial purpose if i not actually sell this service to a client, meaning that on the invoice, the client pays for editing or whatever else but NOT for aerials shooting?

What loopholes are used for aerial cinematography in the countries where this is illegal?

 

[Zlin]

I believe the FAA in the US just passed a law that requires a permit for any type of commercial use of an RC aircraft. From what I understand, the permit is fairly expensive.

http://www.faa.gov/news/fact_sheets/news_story.cfm?newsid=6287

 

[Chadfish]

A fellow XP2 owner Derek Maroot, who is an actual pilot, is pretty sure it's actually legal to do this aerial thing professionally. He says the FAA thing is only an advisory circular, not a law. Here's his take on it:

Yeah - I was very skeptical and cautious at first, but after doing research into the matter, I discovered that it was merely an AC or advisory circular and not a law - so it's not necessarily illegal. Even after discovering this, I was still cautious until after I realized that my insurance company - Aerial Pak who insures hundreds of others just like myself has an interesting stance. Aerial Pak and RCAPA both believe that it is not illegal to operate commercially so long as safety and certain steps are taken to minimize risk and that operators work very carefully to stay within the 400 feet agl, no closer than 3 miles of any airport etc... I figured if an insurance company is willing to insure me for 2 million dollars worth of liability, then what I am doing is not viewed as illegal. If it was than an insurance company surely is not going to sell you insurance and say its ok to do this. In addition, most of our work is from tree top level down and if an airplane is going to hit my quad copter, it was crashing anyway. I have found most of my work has come from word of mouth and that my website is not really waving a big red flag, its merely a place I send clients to download/purchase media - I still don't have meta tags in there for the search engines to keep low for now. Finally, I know personally from speaking with FAA inspectors, that they just don't have the time or resources to be enforcing action against us either with the looming budget cuts, and jobs being lost at the FAA. So that's my view - I would keep doing what your doing and don't worry so much about the FAA - they have bigger fish to fry for the time being. So long as we all remain responsible pilots with safety always at the forefront, we will see FAA regulations that don't touch us little guys - it'll be those bigger quads that weigh more than 8-25 lbs.

Here's his site: http://www.topshotsllc.com/

This makes me feel better. But I still might tell other guys it's illegal so cut down on the competition!