The editor wishes to express his gratitude to those individuals and institutions that
have made this book possible.
I have greatly profited from the constructive atmosphere with the coauthors of
this book at the international conference “Spy in the Sky: Regulatory Issues of
Drones and Unmanned Aerial Systems” organised at the Faculty of Law of the University
of Ljubljana in May 2013 in Ljubljana (Slovenia). This was one of the first,
if not the first, conferences worldwide dedicated to regulatory aspects of drones.
This was the period of the initial political decisions of governments around the
world that drones should be integrated into the civilian space and the time many of
us realised that drones are here to stay. I also greatly appreciate what I gained from
my coauthors, who were in many ways much more versed in this area, and also from
my colleagues at the Institute of Criminology at the Faculty of Law—I owe many
ideas to our inspiring and sometimes necessarily turbulent conversations.
My greatest thanks go to all my coauthors. I met some of them for the first time
at the conference. They have been courageous enough to trust the editing of the
book to me. I have known others for a while, and I am happy to be able to work
with them on a common book as I admire and appreciate their work and thoughts.
I would like to thank the Slovenian Research Agency for awarding a postdoctoral
grant that enabled me to research the topic and organise a conference in Ljubljana.
My thanks go also to the Institute of Criminology in Ljubljana and its Director,
Professor Matja? Jager, who showed full understanding of the book.
Finally, I would like to thank the team at the publisher for being very supportive
and encouraging the whole process of preparing this book throughout.