How bloggers blog in Cuba

Michael Orbach says: Here's an International Tribune article about blogging in Cuba, which I believe is somewhat illegal. Bloggers dress up as tourists, speak foreign languages and secretly use hotel Internet lines (natives Cubans aren't allowed).

Once inside the hotel, [Yoani] Sánchez [Google translated version of Sánchez' blog here] has to write fast. Not because she fears getting caught, but because online access is prohibitively expensive. An hour online costs about $6, the equivalent of a fortnight's pay for the average Cuban.

Independent bloggers like Sanchez have to build their sites on servers outside Cuba, and they have more readers outside Cuba than inside.

That is not surprising, since only 200,000 Cubans of the 11 million on the island have access to the World Wide Web, the lowest rate in Latin America, according to the International Telecommunication Union.

Link

[#1 posted by kzar , October 15, 2007 10:03 AM]

The piece is actually from the wires. It should be sourced to Reuters.

[#2 posted by Teresa Nielsen Hayden / Moderator , October 15, 2007 10:36 AM]

Link to where you found it.

[#3 posted by Will Shetterly , October 15, 2007 10:54 AM]

I think you missed the real story buried in this piece: "The Cuban government blames the limited Internet access on the U.S. sanctions that bar Cuba from hooking up to underwater fiber-optic cables that run just 12 miles offshore, a highway of broadband communication. Instead, Cuba must use expensive satellite uplinks to connect to the Internet via countries like Canada, Chile and Brazil."

If the US truly valued freedom of information, the Bush administration would be helping Cuba hook up to those cables.

[#4 posted by Micah , October 15, 2007 11:28 AM]

...has to write fast....because online access is prohibitively expensive.

Umm... Why not just write offline and then cut and paste the text into the blog? Should take less than 5 minutes of actual online time to log in, paste and publish.

[#5 posted by Michael Canfield , October 15, 2007 2:02 PM]

@Micah

Because she is using a computer provided by a hotel, probably in a "business center" off the lobby. She's charged for each minute she uses the hotel's computer -- not just for the minutes she is online on that computer. I wouldn't assume that all Cuban bloggers have the means to afford their own computers on which they can write posts to upload using a hotel computer later, either.

[#6 posted by minimalniemand , October 18, 2007 9:20 AM]

@Will Shetterly:

yeah, the biggest shareholder of the Americas Region Caribbean Optical-Ring System (Arcos) is the US based firm New World Network, which would violate the US-embargo when they would connect cuba.