1
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:03,960
Compared to the golden age of piracy, online bootlegging is pretty tame.

2
00:00:03,960 --> 00:00:08,200
Your average modern pirate has never had to fear the rope and, if they've got scurvy,

3
00:00:08,200 --> 00:00:12,640
it's probably unrelated to the nine seasons of illicit Seinfeld sitting on their hard drive.

4
00:00:12,640 --> 00:00:17,360
There are, however, places around the globe where the internet is heavily restricted and

5
00:00:17,360 --> 00:00:22,280
uncensored access to all that the digital world has to offer is provided by hidden networks

6
00:00:22,280 --> 00:00:28,160
of smugglers, risking imprisonment or worse, to bring their clientele the dankest memes

7
00:00:28,160 --> 00:00:33,200
and latest Hollywood blockbusters on disks and flash drives, effectively creating an

8
00:00:33,200 --> 00:00:36,200
underground, offline internet.

9
00:00:36,200 --> 00:00:40,240
This is partly because adoption of the internet has been incredibly uneven.

10
00:00:40,240 --> 00:00:46,800
By the year 2000, only 5.8% of the global population was connected to the worldwide web, which

11
00:00:46,800 --> 00:00:50,080
included 43% of US residents.

12
00:00:50,080 --> 00:00:56,320
Even two decades later in 2020, only 60% of the world was online compared to 91% of the

13
00:00:56,320 --> 00:01:01,320
United States, but that's not because people in those places don't want the internet.

14
00:01:01,320 --> 00:01:06,240
These gaps on the map are typically due to some combination of poverty, remoteness,

15
00:01:06,240 --> 00:01:11,440
corruption, and the intentional suppression of information by local authorities.

16
00:01:11,440 --> 00:01:16,600
But the development of dense, durable, and most importantly, portable storage options

17
00:01:16,600 --> 00:01:20,880
like flash drives means that digital media can go anywhere that people can.

18
00:01:20,880 --> 00:01:24,480
I don't know what kind of download speeds people are getting in downtown Pyongyang,

19
00:01:24,480 --> 00:01:30,000
but a small backpack has a theoretical carrying capacity of thousands and thousands of terabytes

20
00:01:30,000 --> 00:01:33,560
of highly illegal K-dramas and American sitcoms.

21
00:01:33,560 --> 00:01:38,400
Now details are scarce due to the danger involved, but many North Korean defectors report having

22
00:01:38,400 --> 00:01:42,000
watched pirated Western content before leading the country.

23
00:01:42,000 --> 00:01:47,440
Films like James Bond, Titanic, or Pretty Woman, the definition of decadent Western

24
00:01:47,440 --> 00:01:52,680
media. Getting caught with Russian or Bollywood films could result in three years in a labor

25
00:01:53,200 --> 00:01:58,000
But getting caught with contraband from America or South Korea could mean a far longer sentence

26
00:01:58,000 --> 00:02:03,280
or even execution. But repressive policies like these haven't stopped people from getting ahold of the content

27
00:02:03,280 --> 00:02:09,480
they want. One of the best documented data smuggling networks is Cuba's Paquete Semanal, or the

28
00:02:09,480 --> 00:02:16,880
Weekly Package. Cuba got its first internet connection in September 1996, a 64 kilobit per second link

29
00:02:16,880 --> 00:02:23,720
to the US mainland courtesy of Sprint. After that, however, efforts to connect Cubans languished for years.

30
00:02:23,720 --> 00:02:30,680
In part, this was due to the weak state of the Cuban economy. The fall of the Soviet Union had left them with few international allies, and the US

31
00:02:30,680 --> 00:02:34,880
embargo made infrastructure and even basic hardware very expensive.

32
00:02:34,880 --> 00:02:39,480
The Cuban government was leery of both foreign investment and the possibility that advanced

33
00:02:39,480 --> 00:02:43,160
telecommunications might be used to turn the population against them.

34
00:02:43,160 --> 00:02:47,240
In a country where all magazines, newspapers, radio stations, and television channels are

35
00:02:47,240 --> 00:02:51,680
state-owned, if the government doesn't invest in a big telecommunications project,

36
00:02:51,680 --> 00:02:59,600
it's probably not getting done. So by 2012, only 21% of Cubans were using the internet, compared to 43% of Dominicans

37
00:02:59,600 --> 00:03:07,040
who were connected to the internet in the same year. And it wasn't great internet either, relying on telephone lines and Soviet satellites until

38
00:03:07,040 --> 00:03:10,920
the first fiber optic cable was finally activated in 2013.

39
00:03:10,920 --> 00:03:15,240
Even then, bandwidth for personal use was rationed and fairly expensive, so you had

40
00:03:15,240 --> 00:03:19,720
to go to the government-run internet cafe if you wanted to read Jujinshi, and the download

41
00:03:19,720 --> 00:03:25,120
speeds were terrible. But did everyday Cubans just accept the shoddy infrastructure provided them, or did they

42
00:03:25,120 --> 00:03:30,760
take matters into their own hands? We'll tell you, but first, our officially mandated sponsor.

43
00:03:30,760 --> 00:03:34,960
After it became legal for Cubans to buy a personal computer without a permit in 2008,

44
00:03:34,960 --> 00:03:41,560
the market for international media boomed. Infrastructure-like satellite dishes became easier to get a hold of, and some Cubans installed

45
00:03:41,560 --> 00:03:44,720
them on roofs, hidden inside fake water tanks.

46
00:03:44,720 --> 00:03:49,920
Digital storage was also now cheap, durable, and compact, making dissemination of uncensored

47
00:03:49,920 --> 00:03:55,400
media from the United States and other nations a simple matter of flash drives trading hands.

48
00:03:55,400 --> 00:04:00,240
Since then, the weekly package has circulated throughout Cuba, featuring a constantly updated

49
00:04:00,240 --> 00:04:06,080
roster of movies, music, software news, internet videos, and even ads for local businesses.

50
00:04:06,080 --> 00:04:09,640
The notable exceptions are politics and pornography.

51
00:04:09,640 --> 00:04:14,040
That's because, though there are severe penalties for selling smuggled material at all, it's

52
00:04:14,040 --> 00:04:18,120
easier to avoid becoming a law enforcement priority if you stick to illegal copies of

53
00:04:18,120 --> 00:04:22,600
Die Hard and leave the Manchurian candidate and Girls Gone Wild out of it.

54
00:04:22,600 --> 00:04:28,160
By at least 2017, this system was so sophisticated that a film could debut in the United States

55
00:04:28,160 --> 00:04:32,240
on a Friday and be watched in Havana the following Monday.

56
00:04:32,240 --> 00:04:36,800
The vast majority of Cubans are aware of this system and, in fact, have used it themselves.

57
00:04:36,800 --> 00:04:40,800
Some show up to distributors with flash drives for the newest episodes of their favorite shows,

58
00:04:40,800 --> 00:04:44,720
while others bring Karabite hard drives and transfer the entire package of new material

59
00:04:44,720 --> 00:04:50,200
for that week. Concerned about the effect that mindless and violent American content was having on the

60
00:04:50,200 --> 00:04:55,000
general public, in 2014 the Cuban government actually tried to set up their own competing

61
00:04:55,000 --> 00:05:00,520
package of pirated media called Mochila, or Backpack, filled with government-approved

62
00:05:00,520 --> 00:05:04,880
movies, music, and educational material. It was extremely unpopular.

63
00:05:04,880 --> 00:05:08,520
What, isn't that everyone's favorite pastime?

64
00:05:08,520 --> 00:05:12,880
Using Spanish translations of Crash Course and The Iliad with a seal of approval from

65
00:05:12,880 --> 00:05:18,400
Castro? In this era, it wasn't unusual for small groups of tech-savvy Cubans to create isolated

66
00:05:18,400 --> 00:05:23,240
local networks by running cables from roof to roof in their neighborhoods and repurposing

67
00:05:23,240 --> 00:05:27,840
consumer-grade routers and personal computers to act as nodes in a mesh network with no

68
00:05:27,840 --> 00:05:34,520
central server. The largest such network was the Havana Street Network, or SNET, created in 2011 by the fusion

69
00:05:34,520 --> 00:05:42,520
of several of these smaller networks. At its peak, SNET was estimated to have around 100,000 individual IP addresses, despite having

70
00:05:42,520 --> 00:05:46,520
no direct connection to the outside world. What did they use it for?

71
00:05:46,520 --> 00:05:50,280
Well, the same thing that the rest of us were using the Internet for in 2012.

72
00:05:50,280 --> 00:05:55,520
They had forums, blogs, social media, video streaming, restaurant reviews, and locally

73
00:05:55,520 --> 00:05:58,560
hosted copies of external sites like Wikipedia.

74
00:05:58,560 --> 00:06:02,720
Some even used it to play hacked versions of online games like World of Warcraft or

75
00:06:02,720 --> 00:06:07,360
Dota, really pushing the definition of LAN party on the one side, but not quite doing

76
00:06:07,360 --> 00:06:12,440
MMO justice on the other. Being part of SNET meant strict, self-enforced rules.

77
00:06:12,440 --> 00:06:15,800
No politics, no pornography, no controversy.

78
00:06:15,800 --> 00:06:18,920
Not if they wanted to keep their network free from government interference.

79
00:06:18,920 --> 00:06:24,560
But it wasn't to last. The Cuban government has been expanding, officially sanctioned Internet access as part of its

80
00:06:24,560 --> 00:06:29,240
development strategy, and in 2019, the Havana Street Network and its infrastructure were

81
00:06:29,240 --> 00:06:35,240
absorbed into the state system. As of 2021, 71% of Cubans had some kind of Internet access.

82
00:06:35,240 --> 00:06:39,160
It's becoming both cheaper and easier to connect to the outside world, and sooner or

83
00:06:39,160 --> 00:06:42,960
later this will be the standard way that they get movies and music from abroad, rather than

84
00:06:42,960 --> 00:06:50,600
buying a burnt CD off a teenager on a street corner. Still, as long as there are some blank patches in the worldwide web, in some places the Internet

85
00:06:50,600 --> 00:06:55,960
will look more like this. If you guys enjoyed this video, you can leave a like if you didn't, well, you can leave

86
00:06:55,960 --> 00:06:59,760
a dislike if you want to see a future episode of Techquickie, you can leave a comment

87
00:06:59,760 --> 00:07:02,080
suggesting it, and don't forget to subscribe.