Bit Torrent Protocols

Cuba has one of the highest rates of literacy and education in the world, but also one of the lowest rates of direct Internet access. As a result, Cubans have developed a unique and robust offline system for distributing digital content through removable storage media like USB thumb drives and portable hard drives called El Paquete Semanal (The Weekly Package). In this paper, we describe and analyze the contents of El Paquete and how those contents vary over time and between distributors. We compare it to a lesspopular state sponsored alternative called La Mochila (The Backpack) and discuss their respective distribution systems. We also compare these offline content distribution systems to available online access points such as those in public WiFi parks,tourist hotels, and universities. Finally, we reflect on how this system, developed in the Cuban context, could be useful in other environments.

Cuba has one of the highest rates of literacy and education in the world, but also one of the lowest rates of direct Internet access. As a result, Cubans have developed a unique and robust offline system for distributing digital content through removable storage media like USB thumb drives and portable hard drives called El Paquete Semanal (The Weekly Package). In this paper, we describe and analyze the contents of El Paquete and how those contents vary over time and between distributors. We compare it to a lesspopular state sponsored alternative called La Mochila (The Backpack) and discuss their respective distribution systems. We also compare these offline content distribution systems to available online access points such as those in public WiFi parks,tourist hotels, and universities. Finally, we reflect on how this system, developed in the Cuban context, could be useful in other environments.

Cuba has one of the highest rates of literacy and education in the world, but also one of the lowest rates of direct Internet access. As a result, Cubans have developed a unique and robust offline system for distributing digital content through removable storage media like USB thumb drives and portable hard drives called El Paquete Semanal (The Weekly Package). In this paper, we describe and analyze the contents of El Paquete and how those contents vary over time and between distributors. We compare it to a lesspopular state sponsored alternative called La Mochila (The Backpack) and discuss their respective distribution systems. We also compare these offline content distribution systems to available online access points such as those in public WiFi parks,tourist hotels, and universities. Finally, we reflect on how this system, developed in the Cuban context, could be useful in other environments.

Se parte de una visión de la piratería no tanto como amenaza al sistema, sino como la manera más eficaz de desarrollo tecnológico y cultural. Partiremos de los ejemplos mencionados en The Pirate Book (Maigret & Roszkowska 2015). Primero, el caso de la industria shanzhai en China, cuya deficiencia educativa de los trabajadores les ha llevado a aprender por sí solos los conocimientos técnicos que compiten con la industria tecnológica occidental. El trabajo para las compañías internacionales les permite reproducir a la perfección estos productos y ponerlos en circulación. Luego, el caso de El Paquete, el principal medio de difusión cubano; una carpeta repleta de material audiovisual que puedes descargar en un pendrive en establecimientos físicos. Este material suele estar prohibido por el gobierno de Cuba, que lo tacha de inmoral (series americanas, últimos estrenos, libros, música reggaetón, software e incluso una versión offline de Wikipedia que se refresca con cada actualización sem...

Cuba has one of the highest rates of literacy and education in the world, but also one of the lowest rates of direct Internet access. As a result, Cubans have developed a unique and robust offline system for distributing digital content through removable storage media like USB thumb drives and portable hard drives called El Paquete Semanal (The Weekly Package). In this paper, we describe and analyze the contents of El Paquete and how those contents vary over time and between distributors. We compare it to a less-popular state sponsored alternative called La Mochila (The Backpack) and discuss their respective distribution systems. We also compare these offline content distribution systems to available online access points such as those in public WiFi parks, tourist hotels, and universities. Finally, we reflect on how this system, developed in the Cuban context, could be useful in other environments.

What if videotapes were considered as either waste or commodity – to be forgotten, or sold and reused and re-recorded? This is the ques- tion raised by this text, which gives an account of a multi-sited ethno- graphic project that follows the human and material circulation of amateur analogue video technologies in Romania since the mid-1980s. At the intersection of anthropology and media archaeology, this text aims to show how videotapes have been an important part of a post- socialist Romanian media infrastructure, that distributed pirated me- dia, home movies, and local television productions.

Seedboxes are used around the world to rapidly distribute data over peer-to-peer BitTorrent (BT) protocol. They are regarded as decentralization for data distribution. However, there exist inherent inefficiencies on its implementation. Users often download identical data, and current technologies treat each users' data as unique. This approach disadvantages seedbox providers as massive identical data are stored multiple times, reducing storage efficiency, increasing bandwidth demands, and increasing operational costs. In this abstract, we introduce a method to eliminate these inefficiencies and ultimately reduce operational costs.

It is possible to transfer gigabits of data with near perfect secrecy using the BitTorrent Protocols and BitTorrent Objects
providing one concatenates them together in a way to provide essentially concatenated encryption (as single step
encryption does not fully hide predictable plaintexts).

However, each BitTorrent object must be partially washed of its original value at the nibble (or byte) level, so as to
create meaningful intermediate cyphertext.

It is best that all of this be done by reprogramming (by command) LibTorrent, but with a separate function library
called say RotorSecure_LibTorrent.

At least initially this circumvented library should have 2 operating modes : Outbound Server or Inbound Server. The
roles should be changeable by a CAPCHA interface for secure reverse messaging. Some efforts must be made to hide
this encryption function library, but nothing too difficult to debug.

To hide a secret in the open, a public domain open source version of this technology should be available on the open
internet.

Branch code versions (for say individual Intelligence Agency use) should be maintained separately.

The outbound transmission (including any keying state negotiations, inbound or outbound) should appear as perfectly
bland and ordinary BitTorrent encrypted file transfers of no special importance.

An examination (through theory, polemic, "utopian plagiarism", & anecdote) of the potentially fruitful cross-talk between punk and media piracy in the interest of developing a poethics of transgression which can function as both a theory and practice of anti-capitalist approaches to culture, art, and media.