Spotted this on AvWeb today.
FlyteNow Sues FAA Over Flight-Sharing Site - AVweb flash Article
If I'm not mistaken, the same "vagueness" exists within the Australian regulations for communications around the notification of a flight and who your "friends" really are in terms of cost sharing.
Similarly, if I post on here that I'm doing a ferry flight for example and want someone to share expenses, am I breaking the law to do this? Facebook friends would be a similar situation if I'm not mistaken.
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FlyteNow, a start-up online business that wants to match empty seats in general-aviation aircraft with passengers who would share the costs, has sued the FAA over its statement that the practice would violate FARs. "This is a classic case of government overreaction to new technologies and innovative ideas," said Jon Riches, a lawyer at the Goldwater Institute, a nonprofit group that promotes free-market economics. The institute, which is representing Flytenow in its suit against the FAA, argues in its news release, issued on Tuesday, that the FAA's decision "violates the First Amendment and Due Process rights" of the company.
The Institute says it believes the FAA's rules are "unconstitutionally vague because it cannot provide legally-required 'fair warning' of what communication activities of private expense-sharing pilots are allowed or not." Riches said: "Instead of updating regulations to reflect the way Americans communicate today, the FAA is stifling innovation and silencing pilots who want to use the Internet to communicate their travel plans." In its interpretation of the regulations, issued last August in response to a request from AirPooler, a similar flight-sharing start-up, the FAA said for a general-aviation pilot to post flights online would constitute "holding out," that is, making a public offer to transport people for compensation.
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In a legal interpretation released Aug. 13, the FAA's Chief Counsel for Regulations ruled against "peer-to-peer general aviation flight sharing" Internet-based operations that allow private pilots to offer available space on flights they intend to take. AirPooler Inc. had asked the FAA for an interpretation of the regulations—seeking to confirm that a pilot participating in the AirPooler service would not be receiving compensation as prohibited by FAR 61.113 and whether pilots participating in AirPooler are commercial operators and thus required to hold a certificate under Part 119.
The interpretation issued by the FAA disagreed with AirPooler's position and stated that arranging for flights and passengers through the AirPooler website met all elements of common carriage and are not legal under Part 91 because pilots would be "holding out" to transport persons for compensation or hire. The FAA noted that its position forbidding website-based ride sharing operations is consistent with rulings it had made previously on nationwide initiatives involving expense-sharing flights