June 2015

Facebook says it is rolling out an experimental new feature that increases access to encryption technology for its users. A new setting on the social networking site allows users to encrypt e-mails between them and Facebook, such as messages for resetting passwords. Facebook will also allow users to share their public encryption keys right along with all their other contact info on their profiles. Those keys can be used to send a scrambled message, which only a recipient can read. It's a highly secure form of communication. And one rarely used by the general public. "Facebook's move means that there is a much broader audience of people who are thinking about end-to-end encryption," says Heather West of the Internet security firm CloudFlare.

Putting encryption keys on Facebook profiles can bring them into the mainstream, she says. The increased use of encryption by tech companies is fueling a debate, with tech companies on one side and law enforcement on another. Deputy Assistant Attorney General David Bitkower, speaking at a public forum in May, said encryption could shut out law enforcement even if agencies obtain a search warrant. "That warrant, effectively, is no better than a piece of paper," Bitkower said, "because the information cannot be accessed without the permission of the ultimate end user or end possessor." Many in Silicon Valley aren't swayed. Tim Lordan, who heads the non-partisan, non-profit Congressional Internet Caucus Advisory Committee, says the use of encryption is growing. "A lot of engineers and companies in Silicon Valley feel like it is the only way that they can protect their customers from the NSA and from would-be hackers," Lordan says, adding that while Facebook's latest move is modest, it is symbolically important in the context of the broader encryption debate.

[Commentary] It is often said that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing twice and expecting a different result the second time. A scant three months after regulators torpedoed Time Warner Cable’s proposed merger with Comcast, the company found a new suitor, as part of a blockbuster three-company merger with rivals Charter and Bright House. But unlike its predecessor, this mega-merger among three of America’s six largest cable providers is likely to receive the government’s approval.

The reasons why one proposed cable behemoth was bad, but another is good, is not obvious, and has little to do with the traditional story about preventing cable monopolies. The quest for scale is driving merger mania throughout the industry, including the aborted Comcast-Time Warner deal and Charter’s proposed mega-merger. But mergers give these companies greater scale in another industry as well: broadband Internet service. America’s cable companies are also its largest Internet providers. Many assume this drove the government’s concern about the Comcast deal. Cable is under increasing pressure from Internet-based video providers such as Netflix and Hulu. But those companies rely upon broadband networks to reach consumers. The combined Comcast-Time Warner empire would have controlled roughly half of all American broadband customers -- and regulators were afraid the company might use its power over broadband networks to protect its cable business from Internet-based competition. Ultimately, cable’s merger mania reveals its identity as a mature industry in transition. The Internet has a history of disrupting seemingly stable old businesses, as companies such as Borders, Blockbuster, and countless music labels can attest. Now the Internet has cable in its sights. Greater scale will help this suddenly old media compete more effectively in an increasingly rich, dynamic, and competitive market for video. And in the process it will free up capital to improve Internet speeds and build out the broadband networks that will power the industry’s future.

[Danile Lyons is an associate professor at Boston College Law School]

You have to mean it before it's a crime. So said the Supreme Court in a ruling about online threats of violence. The opinion reverses a lower court's conviction of a man who fantasized on Facebook about killing his ex-wife. That may ease the fear many of us have about inadvertently putting something on the Internet that gets misconstrued. But the finding is a major setback for those trying to make the Web a less hateful and hostile place, particularly for women. Women are subject to tremendous amounts of harassment online. It's on Periscope. It's on blogs. It has forced some women to flee their homes. It's unfair, pervasive and seemingly unstoppable, though not for lack of trying. Entire teams of people -- the New Republic once called them Deciders -- now help tech companies police hateful speech with a mix of human oversight and computer algorithms.

If the Supreme Court had ruled the other way, it wouldn't have necessarily eased the burden on these folks. But it might have offered them, the perpetrators and the victims of hate speech a bit more guidance. The case's outcome instead places even greater responsibility on tech companies to figure out strong harassment policies on their own, and on the people who write and struggle to enforce them judiciously, often on a case-by-case basis. To require that victims be convinced of a genuine threat and to prove they're not imagining it is an impossible ask. It's basically a request for mind-reading, for threat recipients to get inside their terrorizers' heads. This might not be a problem if, as a rule, everyone on the Internet treated one another like decent human beings and nobody ever maligned anyone. But that is not the Internet we know. Our Internet is often filled with hostility, harassment and bigotry. And the fact that many of its users -- particularly women -- are regularly forced to deal with it should give us pause before we celebrate too loudly our newly upheld freedom to make threats against them.

[Commentary] Just like in the US, the smartphone market in China is near saturation. They are now a common tool, owned by the average family, like washing machines or rice cookers. More than 90 percent of cellphone sales in China are smartphones. In the first quarter of 2015, according to IDC, China's smartphone shipments dropped to 98.8 million units, a 4.3 percent drop from a year earlier, the first quarterly fall in six years. So China is now close to "peak smartphone." What happens next? A few possibilities:

1. Apple booms as a status symbol: "Apple is perceived as a luxury brand in China, so its brand status is just as important as its utility in the Chinese market," says Liz Flora, who watches the China luxury market as editor in chief at Jing Daily.
2. More premium competition: In China's saturated smartphone market, other brands will realize that they not only need to make more premium models, they need to do a much better job of them than they have in the last few years.
3. Sub-brands aimed at younger buyers: Looking at the phone market as a whole, many Chinese brands will create or expand sub-brands to challenge Xiaomi.