Cuban Artist Kcho’s Internet Service is a Lie

Cuban Artist Kcho's Internet Service is a Lie
March 19, 2015
Isbel Diaz Torres

HAVANA TIMES – Cuba's wealthy visual artist Alexis Leyva, better known
as "Kcho", is offering access to his broadband Internet connection as
part of a socio-cultural project offered by his studio. The connection,
however, is extremely bad.

The two times I have tried to use this service, I've gone away
disappointed, unable to do two very simple things: send an email and
publish a blog entry.

On Tuesday, the second time I went, I was determined to wait as much as
needed and type in the vacuous password, "aquinoserindenadie"
("noonewillsurrender") as many times as many times as required.

I arrived at Kcho's modern properties at 10:30 am, when some 20 people
were using his Internet service.

My repeated attempts at logging into Facebook met with the following
error message: "The connection with the specified server could not be
found (java.security.cert.CertPathValidatorException: Trust anchor to
certificate path not found. [javax.net.ssl.SSLHandshakeException]."

When I tried to access my Gmail account, I ran into this error message:
"Can't establish a reliable connection to the server."

After many attempts, I then tried to visit Havana Times. I didn't get
any kind of error message, but I still wasn't able to access the page.

After 45 minutes, I was finally able to access Facebook and Gmail – but
don't get too excited. Facebook was super-slow and I wasn't able to post
a single message or see one photo. I was barely able to see two posts by
friends, but only the text.

Something similar happened with Gmail. I managed to access the page, but
I was unable to see my messages in the inbox, let alone send out any
emails. Finally, error messages began to pop up and the application closed.

At 11:48 (an hour and a half of repeated attempts later), I managed to
log into Twitter and see the latest Tweets, but I was unable to publish
anything.

In addition to being slow, I was asked to type in the insufferable
password every several minutes, at a page which showed an old picture of
Fidel Castro as background decoration.

The worst part of this isn't the bad or non-existent service but the
logic behind it. As you can see, access to the Internet isn't presented
as a right but as a hand-out, a gift that this magnate of the arts gives
us, through a paternalistic, populist and opportunistic gesture towards
those who do not have his privileges.

The Estudio Romerillo Art Laboratory patronage and its offer of free
WiFi is yet another example of how the island's cultural elites are
consolidating themselves, besmirched, in this case, by the name of a
rich artist who uses his power in the Cuban parliament to support the
approval of an exploitative and anti-popular tax legislation, today
known as the "Kcho Law."

Source: Cuban Artist Kcho's Internet Service is a Lie - Havana Times.org
- http://www.havanatimes.org/?p=110086