Perhaps it was inevitable, then, that journalists in the United States would take an interest in drone technology, too. According to an ABC News report last week, professors at the University of Missouri have started a “Drone Journalism Program” to teach their students how to use drones as reporting tools. Students “learn to fly them, and also do what reporters do: brainstorm ideas, go out and do reporting, do drone based photography and video,” professor William Allen told reporter Colleen Curry. “We're trying to see if this is going to be useful for journalism.”

The Chinese help-wanted ad follows on the heels of an already successfully journalistic drone exercise conducted by a different Chinese news outlet last fall, according to the CRI report. Americans are getting in line. Curry continues:

The leaders of the drone journalism movement envision a time when news organizations replace costly helicopters and pilots with cheap drones to get closer to breaking news or weather stories, along with using them to uncover investigative pieces they may normally not see.

“The other aspect is investigative, the idea is you put a drone up in the air and look around. Maybe you'll find things, who knows what yet,” Allen said. “We need to explore that and see. Many journalists can't afford to rent a helicopter and fly around.”

Take, for example, a frequently raised question: If a drone is hovering over my private property, do I have a right to shoot it out of the sky?

In this property-rights-obsessed nation, it turns out you actually don't have a clear right to shoot down a drone hovering low over your backyard unless it's putting you in imminent physical danger.

"You have to acknowledge in this day and age that stuff flies over your house," Ryan Calo, a professor at the University of Washington who specializes in robotics and the law, told me.