In what must be some sort of minor miracle from the ghosts of government competence, the Federal Aviation Administration has launched a functioning version of its drone registration website on time.

The FAA announced in October that it was planning on requiring every drone owner to register with the agency. Last week, the agency issued an interim final rule outlining the specifics of the program (briefly, it requires anyone who owns a drone that weighs more than half a pound to register with the FAA).

The FAA has missed most every drone deadline it has set for itself, and the program is expected to be large, with more than a million drone owners to register over the course of the next month or so; it was reasonable to guess that the agency wouldn't manage to put together a fully functioning database and registration form in the matter of a couple months.

The site launched Monday as planned, and I was able to register myself within a couple minutes. The form was simple, straightforward, and not all that onerous.

That's not to say it's a perfect system or that the very idea of drone registration is a good or even legal one. Several groups have suggested that they might take legal action against the FAA—the argument is that the FAA Modernization Act of 2012—which gave the agency the latitude to regulate commercial drones—did not give the agency authority to regulate drones flown for hobby purposes only.

The Academy of Model Aeronautics, a large national hobby organization, has told its members not to register yet, and has repeatedly said it's disappointed with the FAA's decision.