Amazon's Quadcopters : Short Comment

I'm not as sceptical as some people about Amazon's quadcopter delivery system.

Although it's certainly still in the stage of playfulness and hype, Amazon are very smart, very ambitious and very good at turning advanced technology into viable services. The thing to remember is that quadcopters can be combined with delivery trucks, so that a truck can go to an area, launch 10 or so quadcopters to take packages the last half-mile and then move on. I bet there are some serious fuel savings there. And over such short distances, not a huge risk of air-piracy.

Ethan Zuckerman :

... in this case, I think Amazon probably did a mental calculation and said, ‘if we don’t do this, we’re going to end up the subject of a boycott on Fox News, and that’s coming right before the Christmas season, we can’t afford that.’ I have no way of justifying that statement; that’s a speculation. But I understand why they might be concerned about this.

Depressing.

Hard to know how to stop this. The Amazon is way too big to police. There are always going to be people at the edge who are tempted to cut further into the forest. Do you devise a ring of "farm-free zones" all the way around? Prohibit exports of soya or crops from the surroundings? What about the millions of people who already live in the forest?