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Cuba's Nationwide Sneakernet: a Model For Developing Nations?
lpress writes: Cuba has little Internet infrastructure, but they have a well-organized sneaker net called El Paquete Semanal (the weekly packet). El Paquete distributes a terabyte of digital entertainment nationwide every week using portable drives. The system is reliable and the organization is said to be Cuba's largest private employer, but it is technically illegal and the content is pirated. A legitimatized Paquete would save scarce Internet resources for other applications. El Paquete is also a possible model for other developing nations.
Vox has a short documentary about the system.
On the one hand, they could do the pro-freedom thing and recognise ideas and expressions can't be owned, legitimising this business - it's something the State could run efficiently as part of the postal service.
On the other hand, the US is (despite promises to the contrary) very much anti-free-trade, in that the US is the only one allowed to be protectionist - so if they want to share resources with other countries, they're going to have to give in to the copyright cartel.
It is hard to see a downside to this but for limited distribution. Can you think of a modern analog?
I like to seem the try to muscle their way into Cuba...
ELOI, ELOI, LAMA SABACHTHANI!?
And instead embrace freedom and allow their impoverished citizens embrace freedom and capitalism, and exchange information that way.
The reason that "Cuba has little Internet infrastructure" is because communism is a colossal economic and political failure. Free capitalism economies offer a much better model for getting out of poverty and building out an information infrastructure.
Lawrence Person (lawrencepersonh@gmailh.com (remove all "h"s to mail)
http://www.lawrenceperson.com/
Why on earth would anyone think this is illegal? There are a lot of things that are wacky wrong in Cuba, but copying 1s and 0s without fear of some artificial scarcity punishment is not one of them.
Keep circulating the tapes
North Korea uses exactly the same system for exchanging news: http://techli.com/2012/05/nort....
This is bootlegging. There's nothing new or nice or fancy about it just because it is occurring in Cuba rather than New York City.
A bootlegger(pirate) carries a bunch of content on physical media, duplicates it and then sells the copies.
This is an age old model for fucking thieves. Don't romanticize it.
In the Philippines during the 80s, they used to do the same thing for TV. I lived in one of the 7106 islands and our TV is late for 1 week, since after each day, all the recording from Manila (the capital) are shipped and it arrives on or before 7 days. So we would offset 7 days when there are airing schedules of movies / shows.
Use big drones to distribute solar powered WiFi mesh network nodes, that act as caching proxies, across rooftops and then have smaller drones deliver caches of data on a regular basis. The small drones can even recharge at each node before moving on to the next one to update it's cache. Optimise the routes and node positions and you have the best of both options with the fastest possible cache update times. You do not even need to update the entire cache, just add new content and have the node's storage much large than would fit on the small fast drones.
I don't think drones are covered by the existing standard, better talk to the IETF about updating it.
Right, all you need to do is buy automated drones which can recharge themselves automatically, and carry a payload. And others that can distribute solar powered WiFi nodes. I could do it for about $20 million. Or I could hire a guy with sneakers and a pickup truck.
This seems fine on a tiny island like Cuba, but good luck making this work for developing countries over wider geographical areas.
Seems like they are distributing media content only since Cubans already have some access to "normal" internet through open wifi hotspots in the plazas (spotty and scheduled, but they seem to be able to do video calls with family in Miami so it must be decent enough), Cuba's internet comes through Venezuela BTW.
I fail to see how is this any different from a guy selling pirated movies in SD card, it's free and centrally organized, thats what people do usually against controlling overlords. Wonder how they got bloggers jailed several years ago when they didn't have sneaker nets. They just used Florida's 3G/2G networks, hardware provided by guess who.
Why compare a developing Nation with Cuba anyway, developing nations have free markets mostly and are only limited by the kleptocracy and lack of education. Good thing is that thanks to this discovery in networking now some subsaharian communities will be enlightened with the latests updates on the Kardashians, what a time to be alive!
I like to seem the try to muscle their way into Cuba...
Population of Cuba, 11 million.
Spanish-speaking population of the U.S., 41 million.
Does it ever occur to the geek that the Cuban musician or filmmaker might want to cut himself a slice of that very big pie? Which would imply working with the rights agencies and not against them?
What, the station wagon full of floppy disks broke down?
This whole operation is based on meeting people face to face and trusting them to be generous. That's the kind of trust-thy-neighbor attitude which is largely dying out in richer countries. We've become so rich that we don't need to cultivate neighborly kindness. When we want something, we just get it ourselves, whether it's through wires, Amazon or an SUV trip to the store. I wouldn't want these opportunities to go away, but at the same time, I sometimes think that our wealth has brought us too much self-reliance. We've forgotten what it's like to actually rely on the kindness of strangers, and I we hardly many opportunities to show strangers our kindness.
There's some awesome trolling going on in this thread.
Lets' leave your fantastical wishes and perceptions of morality out of the subject for a moment and concentrate on just the facts.
Fact: Theft of 1s and 0s is a is illegal in the United States. This is based on laws and legal precedent.
Fact: The theft is occurring in the United States.
Fact: That further distribution is occurring outside the U.S. does not negate the fact that the initial theft is illegal.
Now, based on your username, I can tell that you're proud to be a scofflaw. And while that's all well and good, for you, it doesn't chnage the facts. The facts are that what the Cubans are doing is illegal. Just as marijuana is illegal in most states and it's use is a federal crime, no matter how much you like it or that some states have legalized.
It's also a fact that the dissemination of El Paquete is illegal in Cuba according to Cuban law. That the law isn;t rigidly enforced doesn;t change the facts.
With all the attacks on our freedoms including the mass amounts of censorship and tracking of everything, a Sneakernet is what we are quickly going back to here in the United States of America.
Everybody needs to be working hard on Internet 3.x
No DNS
No DHCP
All encrypted
No dependency or control by government or corporations.
This is not so different from the Warez CDs that were available in pre-Internet ages (those were actual pressed CDs). People used to pass them around so you could copy off them what you liked, then pass them on/give them back, etc. Later on you saw them on burned CDRs as well, but with the rollout of broadband Internet these disappeared/became obsolete.
But even though it's in Cuba, Clinton (the male, not the female) somehow managed to come up with an exception to the blanket embargo.... for copyright purposes. Yes, in 1995, at which time of course the US government was already heavily indebted to the copyright industry like they are today.
When the copyright term is "forever minus a day", live every day like it's the last.