I haven't seen anything draconian in the new regulations, just relatively common sense regulations to ensure general health and safety and considerate working practices for everybody not just the drone operator given that UAV operations are going to balloon over the foreseeable future.
What is onerous about having to know where you are flying with any restrictive safety rules that location requires (airports, prisons, DoD, etc) and having that flying object actually traceable to an individual? Many drones won't be upgradable (Canon FD anyone?) but many will have software/firmware or even hardware fixes that make them compliant and all new drones will be compliant. If people are flying over me or my family I don't care, but if they hurt me or my family I want them to be able to be held liable and if the new rules ensure adequate insurance as well I am all for it.
Here's a pretty balance analysis of what the FAA is proposing.
You might want to skip to about 2:30-2:40 into it to get to the meat of the presentation.
The proposed rules go way beyond the current registration and marking of the units by putting the reg. # on them externally.
And the drones I've flown, already have electronic "fencing" on them by default the that keep them from flying in restricted airspace....
What's being proposed is having to have new hardware on each drone that allows it to be tracked with a Remote ID in real time, not only the drone but you the controller too.
One problem with this is, that anyone...John Q public that may just plan not like drones, or law enforcement with nothing better to do that day....can harass you even while you are doing something legal.
There is also the extra costs for this since you will likely have to subscribe to a commercial service that your drone will have to connect to in order to ship all info on you to the FAA....even paying when you are not flying likely.
If you have an old drone without this new specialized equipment, well, it will be about 99% useless....you can fly only in an approved small field...think the open bare fields that model airplanes fly.....that's no good for a drone which is more of a flying camera than a flying hobby unit, you know?
The parts about taking away the privacy of the operator who is operating legally is troublesome to me.....I mean, someone that is a terrorist or up to no good in general, isn't going to comply with this and hack and disable all this....so, in general it only targets the good guys and makes life tough for them.
This seems, IMHO, to be largely targeted at the hobbiest.....and in favor of the commercial operators like Amazon that are wanting to clear the airspace for themselves.
As far as I know...the rules in place now and the ones in the future do not in any way address requiring insurance....