It will be interesting to see how this plays out. I think the biggest issue is that they think they can have something in place by December. No one knows the details yet, not even them it seems. My assumption is that it will be some sort of online registry and they will outsource the work and overpay for it - and it won't be delivered on time. And when it does go live, it won't work right and there will be a lot of maintenance and postponement of enforcement. Then there's the question of notice. Typically you'd see something like this coming for quite a while to give you time to comply, but it doesn't sound like that will happen if they want something in place by December. Unless that means they want the registry in place by then and will begin to enforce later?
I really don't see a manufacturer component in this, since there are far too many home made frames, control boards built out of raspberry pi's, etc., and existing stuff out there that doesn't have any unique identifiers on it. It sounds like the best they can do is require you to put a registration sticker on your frame like you would on offroad vehicles (ATV's, dirtbikes, etc.) - although those have identification numbers tied to their registration. If it does end up having some manufacturer components to it, you'd have to wonder if some of the bigger names lobbied for it to make things harder for some of the mom and pop manufacturing operations, cheap clone manufacturers, etc.
Then the most important question is - what is the cost going to be? Will it be a one time fee, or will we have to keep them registered and then cancel registration when we dismantle, wreck, etc.?? I'm sure they're going to look at what people pay for their copters and know that most have some money to spend. But then again, what about the 20 dollar plastic piece of junk quadcopter that my sister bought my niece from target? Will toy "drones" go away because it won't be economical to register them? Also - I got some parachute men from Chuck-E-Cheese's with the tickets I won the other day. Do I have to register them before I throw them off my balcony?
On one hand though, I don't have an issue with requiring registration because there are a lot of dumb people who do dumb things and there is really no easy way of tracking down who did it, but then again, kids break windows with baseballs and run away every day and we don't require baseballs to be registered. If property damage isn't the issue and this is all about restricted airspace, it seems like a lot of work and money for a lot of people for not much gain. In order for the registration to even be useful, someone would have register their "drone" AND fly in restricted airspace AND crash AND not be able to retrieve their "drone" before they got caught for the registration to even be useful to the government.
What would probably be more appropriate would be to increase education and make it very clear where you can and can't fly and how to be safe. And then they should be looking for solutions to better detect and neutralize "drones" when they fly in restricted airspace, because you know that just like with guns, bad guys aren't going to worry about registering their "drones" because they plan to break a lot more laws than failing to register.
Maybe offering a free online safety course and a quick exam to get a pilot certificate would be better. They do this with certain automobile AC recharge products before you can buy them.
In the end, if the registration is free and I can print out labels and tape them on my quadcopters before flying, who cares =)