
Cuba's “Internet” is a thumb drive that moves by bus - steven
https://medium.com/backchannel/the-only-internet-most-cubans-know-fits-in-a-pocket-and-moves-by-bus-c96b7e82f7aa
======
bane
Here's where I put on my old-man hat. You youngsters reading this might be
flabbergasted, but this is how things worked in the olden-days, before the
Internet.

An example, there use to be this guy names Fred Fish who would compile Amiga
freeware onto floppies and trade them at Amiga user group meetings. I believe
he lived in Idaho. Where he got the freeware was anybody's guess. But through
a thin network of people trading software, the Fish disks (as they became
known) spread far and wide. I didn't have an Amiga, but one of my friends did,
and he had probably 30 Fish disks, which composed _most_ of the library of
software he used (there were about 1000 of these disks).

Generally, they weren't transmitted by BBS, nobody had internet. These were
literally n-th generation copies of the original disks Fred Fish first put
together on _his_ computer and gave out at _his_ local group and to _his_
friends. People from around the world ended up with Fish disks, which are
usually reverently numbered according to the release packages that Fred put
together.

People used to organize "copy parties" where we'd all haul our huge computers,
tower-CRT monitor, sometimes speakers, over to somebody's house and we'd spend
all night copying floppies and sharing software and .mod files and whatever
else. Showing off games and drinking and smoking and doing all other kinds of
crazy things. Fish disks were common sights at these parties and everybody
wanted to fill out their collection or get the latest one...which may have
percolated thousands of miles and over oceans -- by _hand_ to get to this
party.

The movie "Hackers" is a terrible movie from a technical standpoint, but it
really nails the feel of this culture. Competitive and cooperative, doing
something a _little_ bit wrong, mostly at night. Viruses in those days were
designed to spread in this kind of environment of social sharing, embedding
themselves in weird spots on floppy disks and taking up just hundreds of
bytes.

Modems started to kill lots of it off, and widespread Internet killed off the
rest. But it was an amazing time.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Fish](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Fish)

~~~
huxley
I remember typing in programs from magazines and printouts we'd get from
friends.

My "computing" teacher in Junior High School used to get floppies and tapes
sent to him from some friends in American universities, so we got to play
around with the source code for some games on the Commodore PET. I still
remember cutting notches in our 5.25" floppies to make them double sided.

We had acoustic couplers but living in rural Nova Scotia we couldn't afford
the long-distance charges and none of us were ever good enough to be
phreakers.

Good times.

~~~
basicplus2
I remember the only problem with cutting the notch to make the disc double
sided was it turned the other way when upside down and the dust collected by
the fabric hair brush unloaded all the dust back onto the disc :)

------
drivingmenuts
> What should the US do about Cuban connectivity?

Um, nothing? I don't mean this from a sense of "who cares?" but more from a
sense of "let Cubans figure out what works for them". If they ask for help,
provide it. But don't go interfering unnecessarily where interference is not
particularly asked for.

I suspect that the world would be a much different place if we'd followed that
dictum in the first place.

~~~
onion2k
_If they ask for help, provide it. But don 't go interfering unnecessarily
where interference is not particularly asked for._

Except the US still has a number of trade embargoes in place with Cuba, so
while they could ask for help it's possible the people they ask would be
legally bound to say no. Lifting decades old sanctions that hurt both Cuba and
the US (in hundreds of millions of dollars in lost export trade) would be
something the US could, and should, do.

A trade embargo with a country on grounds of it being ideologically different
falls under "interfering unnecessarily" in my opinion.

~~~
humanrebar
> A trade embargo with a country on grounds of it being ideologically
> different falls under "interfering unnecessarily" in my opinion.

That sort of hand waving does a disservice to history. Initially the embargo
was enacted because Cuba nationalized industries without providing fair
compensation (a).

It's true that the embargoes have been more ideological since then, but the
ideology is that fairly basic human rights (life, liberty, free speech) should
be respected (b).

All that being said, the Castros are pretty entrenched. Maybe healthier
interaction with Cuba would promote human rights faster. But you don't have to
make straw man assertions to make that point.

a)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_embargo_against_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_embargo_against_Cuba)

b)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_Cuba#Political...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_Cuba#Political_executions)

~~~
vidarh
The nationalisations that caused the first trade embargo followed hostile
moves from the Eisenhower administration by e.g. reducing trade quotas and
through the refusal of an American owned refinery to sell to the Cuban
government. The rest of the nationalisation followed as a retaliation against
the that trade embargo.

Basically Eisenhower shot himself in the foot by first rebuffing early
advances by Castro that sent Castro head first into the arms of the Soviets,
and then it just got worse from that.

It had nothing to do with ideology on either side, but with money and power.

~~~
ArkyBeagle
America was shocked by the nationalizations in Mexico in the decades before,
so it's unsurprising that this was considered bad form. Embargo was always the
escalation of choice then.

I believe Castro was also pretty Marxist well before 1959. That would have
constrained what any politician in the US could have done.

------
hcentelles
It's been a while now since "El Paquete" became the main distribution channel
of online content in Cuba, a lot has been written about this before.

A less known aspect of this topic is the net neutrality issues that this kind
of distribution imply. At the end of the day, all the content come from this
mighty anonymous source that download and distribute the content for a profit,
presumably a huge profit. This source is god, he or she has the last word of
what get in and what is left out.

So, since the beginning of "El Paquete" my website revolico.com went in.
Revolico content (classifieds ads) is like a basic need in a market with
almost 100% goverment control over the retail space (price fixing,
availability, etc.), but about a month ago our content was left out, with a
note that said that it would no longer be available because it has been used
to for the purposes of “personal and political defamation against the country
and its citizens.”, I was like WTF, is this the goverment infiltrating "El
Paquete"? is a nasty move of our competitors? Who knows, the problem is that
one guy has the power to decide what is ditribute it and what is not. This is
not good by any mean.

Two weeks after revolico came back to "El Paquete", everything points that the
customers were asking for it, so the producers were forced to include it
again.

"El Paquete" is one of the best things that is happen in Cuba digital space
right now, but a not centralized version is mandatory to make it less
vulnerable to goverment control or other kind of arbitrariness.

More on this:

[http://cubanotes.com/is-the-cuban-government-censoring-el-
pa...](http://cubanotes.com/is-the-cuban-government-censoring-el-paquete-the-
answer-would-seem-to-be-yes/)

[http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/dec/23/cuba-offline-
in...](http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/dec/23/cuba-offline-internet-
weekly-packet-external-hard-drives)

~~~
drzaiusapelord
Where is revolico hosted? What are your analytics like in a country with so
little internet penetration? Does being in El Paquete mean that people are
seeing ads that are now weeks or even months old?

~~~
hcentelles
The app is hosted in a typical cloud computing environment. The traffic from
Cuba is 4M page views monthly. El Paquete gets updated every week so the
people are seeing ads active the week before. We sell premium listing, our
clients ask us for the right timing so its ads gets into El Paquete in the
firsts positions.

------
anc84
> She did make that movie, she called it “Offline,” and she handed me a copy.
> It’s like El Packete, going in the other direction, and this time with
> meaningful content: I brought it back with me to the U.S. I hope you will
> watch it today.

Links to [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PlPiG-
pDvGA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PlPiG-pDvGA) which of course is blocked
in Germany because

> Unfortunately, this video is not available in your country because it could
> contain music from UMG, for which we could not agree on conditions of use
> with GEMA.

Gate-keepers here, gate-keepers there. Youtube is a proprietary service that
(can) arbitrarily disable access to whatever you shove into it. Please always
remember that. If you want to spread your creations without other people
controlling them, consider P2P or hosting them yourself.

~~~
Liblor
I use a VPN that tunnels through Sweden and I just got the GEMA "error
message", but I don't even live in Germany (so information leak should not be
the case). After changing the VPN exit node to another country, it worked.
"Gate-Keepers" can be a problem, but hosting videos on your own can be quite
expensive, so I'd recommend to use several distribution ways/different
hosters.

------
indexboy
Venezuela here, there is 2 daily flights from venezuela to cuba, everyone that
travels there goes with around 200 flash drives, sd cars, etc. The airlines
(cubana and conviasa) doesnt care about what u take to cuba, ive seen ppl
taking up to 3 fridges as their baggage

~~~
indexboy
Oh, forgot to say they also take pirates dvd vcd etc, with everything,
software, books, movies, music, piracy regulation in venezuela doesnt exist
and cuba ppl is untochable due to venezuela and cuba friendship so is kinda
smuggling paradise.

~~~
jordigh
> piracy regulation in venezuela doesnt exist

Is that literally true like in Iran, or is it simply not enforced? Venezuela
signed the Berne convention.

------
huxley
"Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes hurtling
down the highway."

— Andrew S. Tanenbaum, Computer Networks (1989)

~~~
ethbro
More importantly, never underestimate the invisibility of one station wagon
full of tapes among thousands that aren't.

------
malkia
Things worked for me like this while growing as a kid in Burgas, Bulgaria, up
until I graduated in 1994.

There was a guy that used to carry a big back of disks - Apple ][, but mostly
PC, where he would let people copy off things he got, but often he charged -
for example I had to pay something like $1 for Mission Impossible back then
(the Apple ][ and the PC game - can't remember which one I've got).

Open source wasn't really in my mind then, and It was a really good awesome
moment when I saw that there are sources for a compression program
(zip/unzip). Until then we've had PKWARE Arc, PKWARE Zip, LHA, LZH - and
everything that was coming was only DOS binaries (no source).

And then one day he got this disk with these sources, and for some reason he
let me borrow the disk and copy it.

------
danko
To be clear here, it's not a single thumb drive (as the title implies) but a
network of thumb drives distributed through an ad-hoc parcel service. Frankly,
it doesn't sound that different than the old shareware and disc-based
multimedia subscription services that used to exist in the US in the early-to-
mid-90s (such as LAUNCH and SoftDisk). The biggest difference I can see is
that (a) it's largely pirated content and (b) there's seems to be some user
generated content as well.

------
Maken
Is "El Packete" the real name of the thing or is the journalist constantly
misspelling "El Paquete" though the article?

~~~
jwise0
It is El Paquete:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Paquete_Semanal](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Paquete_Semanal)

The pervasive misspelling concerned me. If the basic details are wrong, what
chance is there of the _actual_ cultural details being right? It seems like
the author does not speak fluent Spanish, which makes it difficult to trust
their understanding of how el paquete actually travels.

------
jkot
In 1987 public TV in communist Czechoslovakia distributed programs for 8 bit
computers. TV presenter always said "switch on the magnetophones...", followed
by 5 minutes of modem beeps :-)

------
keithpeter
Quote from OA

 _" El Packete is a very slow high-capacity Internet access connection;
someone (no one knows who) loads up those drives with online glitz and gets
them to Cuban shores..."_

On the off-chance anyone relevant in Miami is reading this: The Isabella
Stewart Gardner Museum distributes 8GB to 10Gb of Creative Commons licensed
classical music, mostly chamber. Might be useful to fill the odd corner of the
media over (say) a month or two of releases. Or just put The Concert podcast
on each release...

[http://www.gardnermuseum.org/music/listen/music_library?filt...](http://www.gardnermuseum.org/music/listen/music_library?filter=composer)

...older more classically minded citizens might appreciate the gesture.

------
mxfh
What happened to those wireless-plus-wheels approaches from about 10 years
ago?

[http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/6506193.stm](http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/6506193.stm)

Low-cost Communication for Rural Internet Kiosks Using Mechanical Backhaul:
[http://people.csail.mit.edu/matei/papers/2006/mobicom_kiosks...](http://people.csail.mit.edu/matei/papers/2006/mobicom_kiosks.pdf)

------
snorvell
It's spelled paquete.

An interesting sideline to this is the question of who or what produces this
product. There's a compelling argument that the government might be behind it,
or at the very least have some hand in its production and distribution.

[http://cubanotes.com/who-or-what-is-behind-cubas-peculiar-
ve...](http://cubanotes.com/who-or-what-is-behind-cubas-peculiar-version-of-
netflix/)

------
GizaDog
Cuba's mystery fiber-optic Internet cable stirs to life
[http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/01/22/us-cuba-
internet-i...](http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/01/22/us-cuba-internet-
idUSBRE90L13020130122)

They have the pipe but the state controls it.

~~~
dharma1
Was gonna say, just get Venezuela to pay for an underwater cable. Guess they
did already, but only for select few.. at least they don't need to buffer
their youtube videos :D

Was there for a couple of months 10 years ago touring with a band. Great trip
and wonderful people, but I doubt the government are gonna allow unrestricted
access to information via the internet if the state newspapers/radio is
anything to go by.

------
martin1975
This is sad. Hopefully satellite providers like O3B
([http://www.o3bnetworks.com/customers/](http://www.o3bnetworks.com/customers/))
make a dent in this market. It seems O3B exists primarily to satisfy
connectivity needs for places just like Cuba.

------
ja27
Similar article from last month:

[http://kernelmag.dailydot.com/issue-sections/headline-
story/...](http://kernelmag.dailydot.com/issue-sections/headline-
story/13117/tech-cuba-reforms/)

------
chx
This is how piracy worked in Hungary during the nineties. Maybe at first it
was floppy disks that I can't remember but I remember 120MB QIC tapes (floppy
interface, crazy slow) then DAT tapes then hard drives. Weekly delivery from
Austria.

------
0xdeadbeefbabe
Now that's a fault tolerant distributed network. IP is jealous in some ways.
Can you email with El Paquete?

I also wonder if content is higher quality or at least more carefully curated
than on the always connected internet.

------
Zardoz84
Looks like a evolution of RFC 1149 :
[https://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc1149.txt](https://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc1149.txt)

------
xacaxulu
Probably safer at least.

------
paulhauggis
but they have healthcare that is better than the US amirite?

------
mangecoeur
Ironically, this Cuban 'internet' is more secure and surveillance-free than
the real one.

~~~
hcentelles
Not really, unfortunately: [http://cubanotes.com/is-the-cuban-government-
censoring-el-pa...](http://cubanotes.com/is-the-cuban-government-censoring-el-
paquete-the-answer-would-seem-to-be-yes/)

