Today it was announced that the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has struck a blow against innovators everywhere by preemptively banning the use of unmanned aircraft (also known as “drones”) for delivery purposes.

The FAA ruling, as reported by TechCrunch, clarifies that “delivering packages to people for a fee” is not a hobby or recreational use, so remains verboten for now. Even free shipping does not qualify so long as it is associated with a financial transaction.

In reality, this ruling has little immediate impact. But it is just the latest instance that highlights the conundrum facing the federal government. The FAA is attempting to regulate at its normal pace a form of technology that is rapidly proliferating for both personal and corporate use. We are approaching a tipping point where the FAA’s control of the situation will spiral out of control, simply because some impatient innovators will ignore the laws and regulations to start testing new ways to deploy and employ unmanned aircraft. This is not an abstract issue. As the Washington Post has been reporting over the last week, the military is increasing the number of unmanned training flights in the U.S., which creates a whole host of safety and operational issues that the FAA, once again, has to take into consideration.

The FAA is between a rock and a hard place, but it needs to move quickly to provide a stronger framework and timeline for the use of unmanned aircraft in the U.S., if it doesn’t want to be playing a permanent game of “Follow the Unmanned Leader.”