Sure, and creation of a law would be voluntary on the part of the government. The end result for the owner is the same - an involuntary restriction of their drone's software.
We don't need any more encouragement of device lockdown, treacherous computing, and the general erosion of ownership.
I'm sympathetic to the criticality of airport approaches, but also sympathetic to people flying drones above their own property to arbitrary heights while informing ATC (perhaps it's time to revisit that previous uncompensated aeronautical space grab). But this balance is orthogonal to what I'm arguing about.
In any industry that adopts treacherous computing, it spreads like cancer. Phones, cars, entertainment, payment cards. Assumptions of the user being hostile get baked into the design and business models, and must be fortified ever-harder over time. In a computing-based world, perverted cultures that mandate closed devices are simply incompatible with individual autonomy and self-reliance. "Selling" a device while retaining control over it is basically fraud.
Pragmatically, I'd be in favor of the "default config" coming with built-in geofencing to avoid thoughtless idiotic situations. But then the ability to change and fully remove that code must also be provided, ideally through well-documented reflashing process. Anything less creates the unavoidable centralizing path down the slippery slope, and from the users' perspective it hardly matters whether it's the manufacturer or government driving the process.
