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Lessons from El Paquete, Cuba's Offline Internet

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Lessons from El Paquete, Cuba's Offline Internet Lessons from El Paquete, Cuba’s Offline Internet Joel Lenin Pinargote Bravo, Rafael Beto Mpfumo, Luis Alejandro Madruga Milanés, Ximena Michelle Cueva, Gretel García Gómez, Amalia Gómez Marcheco, Alberto Fernández Oliva Universidad de La Habana Havana, Cuba [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected] Jeanna Neefe Matthews Sam P. Kellogg Clarkson University/Data and Society New York University Potsdam, United States New York, United States [email protected] [email protected] ABSTRACT Finally, we reflect on how this system, developed Cuba has one of the highest rates of literacy and in the Cuban context, could be useful in other education in the world, but also one of the lowest environments. rates of direct Internet access. As a result, Cubans Author Keywords have developed a unique and robust offline Cuba, Internet, Offline Content Distribution, system for distributing digital content through Digital Media, Networking removable storage media like USB thumb drives and portable hard drives called El Paquete ACM Classification Keywords Semanal (The Weekly Package). In this paper, we H.5.m. Information interfaces and presentation describe and analyze the contents of El Paquete (e.g., HCI): Miscellaneous and how those contents vary over time and INTRODUCTION between distributors. We compare it to a less- Internet access rates in Cuba are up substantially popular state sponsored alternative called La from 23% in 2011 to roughly 40% in 2016 Mochila (The Backpack) and discuss their [13][14]. However, this still remains one of the respective distribution systems. We also compare lowest rates of direct Internet access worldwide, these offline content distribution systems to and the lowest rate in the Western Hemisphere. available online access points such as those in Most Cubans access the Internet through outdoor public WiFi parks,tourist hotels, and universities. public WiFi parks where access is expensive (approximately $1 USD per hour of access from Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are an average Cuban salary of $30 per month), not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies inconsistent, and inconvenient in comparison bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than the author(s) must be with persistent mobile access. Some are also able honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or to access the Internet at work or through republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from educational institutions. A 2015 article estimated [email protected]. that roughly 5% of Cubans have Internet access at home, and though this figure has certainly gone COMPASS '18, June 20–22, 2018, Menlo Park and San Jose, CA, USA 1 © 2018 Copyright is held by the owner/author(s). Publication rights up since then, at-home access remains rare [15]. licensed to ACM. ACM 978-1-4503-5816-3/18/06$15.00 https://doi.org/10.1145/3209811.3209876 1 It is worth nothing that Internet-access rates in Cuba are increasing rapidly and 2017 saw the increased availability of nauta-hogar, ETECSA’s In each of these contexts, bandwidth is Craiglist-style marketplace. El Paquete is popular constrained and variable, and some content may and widely known throughout Cuba. be inaccessible. As a result, Cubans have Interestingly, it is not known as El Paquete in all developed a unique and robust offline system for parts of Cuba—for example in Matanzas, only 98 distributing digital content through removable km from Habana, it is known instead as El storage media like USB thumb drives and Cargue or The Load. portable hard drives called El Paquete Semanal As shown in Figure 1, El Paquete is realized very (The Weekly Package). simply as a set of top-level directories, each RELATED WORK named for the themed content it contains, such as The majority of the authors of this paper are “Deportes” or sports content, “Deportes [HD]” or faculty and students in Cuba at the University of sports content in high definition, “Programas TV Havana. We have read with interest a number of Americana” or American TV programs, recent papers on WiFi parks in Havana [1] and “Games,” “Humor,” etc. the Cuban Street Network (SNET) [2]. In both The entire package, assembled each week, is cases, we were pleased to see interest in the roughly 1 TB in size and contains content in 40- innovative ways Cubans are connecting to each 60 top-level directories. The exact list of top-level other and the world. We feel we could provide directories varies week to week and between updates and additions to both of these works distributors. based on our own experiences in Havana, but in this paper, we are focusing on another crucial part of the Internet connection landscape in Cuba, specifically the distribution of content through USB-connected storage devices like hard drives and thumbdrives. Earlier this year, Dye et al. published a qualitative study of the human infrastructure behind El Paquete based on interview and observation data [24]. Figure 1. Screenshot of one example of the top-level directory EL PAQUETE SEMANAL structure of El Paquete. El Paquete Semanal is a collection of digital Buyers must provide their own storage medium material distributed since approximately 2008 in for the content and hard drives are more the unofficial Cuban marketplace as an Internet expensive than USB thumb drives (memorias). It alternative. It has been called Cuba's Google, is common to purchase only specific portions of YouTube, Netflix, Hulu, and Spotify – all without the full content, e.g. choosing specific TV series the Internet [7][8], but these comparisons fail to or movies to fill the purchaser’s available do justice to El Paquete’s particularities and capacity. Within Havana, a standard price for a strengths. El Paquete, updated and distributed complete copy of El Paquete is 2 CUC, or every week, contains a diverse collection of roughly $2 USD, and less for smaller quantities digital content, downloaded from abroad and of data. For specific files, particularly video files produced within Cuba, movies and TV shows (movies, TV, and music videos), it is common for including new releases, music and music videos, distributors to have multiple resolutions available video games, sports programming, digital for purchase, with high-resolution video costing magazines, books, religious materials, mobile and more than low-resolution. PC applications, and entire copies of websites including Wikipedia and Revolico, a Cuban The distribution of El Paquete, while not officially sanctioned by the government, has (the state telecommunications company) home Internet service. We look clearly been permitted by way of a lack of forward to updated figures. government disruption. One reason it is so widely tolerated is that it does not contain content that is are often illegal), and still others rely on the anti-government, subversive, obscene, or passing of physical hard drives from outside of pornographic, following the same "no politics, no Cuba [8]. The heterogeneity of the contents’ pornography” policy common within Cuba origins is sometimes revealed in the content itself: [2][7]). Much of the content is under copyright in sports programs might have channel watermarks, other countries and would be considered pirated and movies and TV shows sometimes bear the material, but this is socially acceptable and legal logo of the downloading team in the corner. in Cuba, where intellectual property laws and Beyond foreign content, there is also a significant norms are markedly different. amount of content produced specifically for Almost everyone in Cuba has a source for dissemination on El Paquete. Some examples receiving El Paquete, whether it is a store-front include Vistar (an independent magazine devoted with signage, a less formal neighborhood to Cuban culture), PlayOff (a magazine about distributor they pay, or a friend who gives them a sports and sports culture), Hablan2D (a show copy free of charge [8]. One common manner of which previews content from the upcoming purchasing El Paquete is through distributors that week’s Paquete), !Seccion Cristiana (Christian physically bring El Paquete to customers’ houses religious content), and !!!Sección A R T E (a on an external hard-drive. Once data is purchased collection of Cuban art ) [8] [9]. El Paquete offers from a distributor, it can then be shared with a means of distribution for this custom content others e.g. through hand-to-hand transmission on that would be unlikely to reach such a wide USB storage, over the SNET or over Zapya or audience otherwise [8]. In turn, the topology of Bluetooth between mobile devices. Thus, while a the network and the means of accessing the tremendous amount of content is paid for directly, content shape the forms that the content crafted many Cubans also rely on friends and family particularly for El Paquete takes. For example, a members to get content second-hand. single week’s “!!!Sección A R T E” might While El Paquete is widely available throughout contain a diverse smattering of e-books and Cuba, it is not as widely known who is behind its PDFs, audio lectures, video clips, images, and high-level distribution. A string of reporters, saved HTML documents, taking full advantage of artists, academics, and other interested parties the digital affordances of the distribution system. have interviewed people at various levels of the Each week, content curators assemble their distribution chain who have described the content sections and pass those sections to a high- processes of production and distribution [5][7], level distribution team known as a matriz, which and some people involved in the process are quite in turn assembles the full package.
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