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Internet Limitations Rankle Cubans, Information Still Gets Around

by Will Safer on April 1, 2008 at 11:56 AM

A modern version of the "sneakernet" is alive and thriving in Cuba, where Internet access and an open online discourse is seriously limited by the government.

Case in point: an underground, informal network of Cuban citizens share Web video, articles and messages that most of view and share online by way of flash drives, which they use to manually transfer data to one another, bypassing the restricted cyberspace, putting banned information directly into each other's hands.

(Sneakernet is the term many Web users have used for years now to describe physically carrying files from one place to another on solid state memory cards.)

In a particularly interesting case, a Cuban computer science student took a government official to task over the restrictions to information and travel imposed on citizens of the island nation. While the exchange, which was recorded on video, could not be sent around on YouTube or MySpace the way it is in free nations, copies have been making there way around on flash drives carried from place to place by hand. A copy eventually made its way out to CNN and the BBC.

The video also shows the official struggling to explain everything from travel restrictions to why Cubans can't go to the resorts based in their country.

From The Raw Feed.


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Tags: censorship, communist, cuba, internet, limitation, restriction, sneakernet, video

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