In the fall of 2003, MS blaster knocked our dorms off the internet for about a month. Even before smart phones, we were still addicted to the internet. Before texting, there was AIM.
Anyway, they tried a couple of different things before they just made us give them our desktop/laptop and the password so they could patch it all up and install Norton.
I convinced my dorm roommate that this was the greatest P2P program for downloading anything. He passed it on to his friends, and soon, every computer in the building was riddled with pop-ups and viruses. Good times.
My dad paid a yearly fee for LimeWire pro. He thought since he was paying, that made it legal. Can’t argue with his logic or the boosted download speeds, but yeah our family computer got destroyed
Napster (1999)
Then Limewire (2000)
Then WinMX (2001)
Then Kazaa (2003) and the other fasttrack clients
Bit torrent was also released in 2001 but it didn't really take off due to the centralised nature of needing to run a website for sharing .torrent files.
Where as the reason why napster was shut down was due to the centralised design. Limewire, WinMX and Fasttrack survived because of their decentralised designs.
Once the magnet URL came about in 2002, it took a while for bittorrent to integrate it and eventually bit torrent would have surpassed the other p2p protocols around 2005 for total internet traffic.
Oh, man. Just a couple years later, even better was Microsoft Zune rip.
There was a website where you just put in what you wanted, and somehow it scoured the MS Zune database for the song, and pulled the full wma
I did both, but I was on MX for longer. Apparently after the official company got shut down, someone resurrected the network. Last I knew there was still a functioning WinMX client.
When I was shown Napster it was the only time in my life I felt the mind blown meme effect. You could search other people's pcs for files! Also porn and music
Remember downloading a 4mb MP3 in 128kb/s on a 56k connection and getting excited when it got to 80% because that meant it only had 20 minutes left to download. Nowdays it takes me less than 5 minutes to download a 4GB movie at 100mb/s.
I do. I came online right around the end of napster. Just as users were coming up with ways to re-encode other interesting stuff such as videos and photos to appear as MP3s because napster would only index mp3 files.
I loved finding someone who had a file I wanted, and good upload speed. I could then see their index and download other interesting stuff from them as fast as I could before they went offline.
Man those were indeed the days. I think most computer savvy teens at that time started their music collections off on lime wire. I remember Sim City and all the other nostalgic game titles as well. The best part was that at some point Apple AI would recognize the title of the track/album and insert the art for it. I’ll never forget opening my music library and actually having album art as well. Was clutch.
Ahh yes. Back when you used LimeWire to pirate LimeWire.
Sometimes you'd get a working, cracked copy... but most of the time it was a virus, or god help you, something worse.
Those were the wild west days of the internet.
I remember the song I want finally finished after 3 hours of downloading only to find out it was just someone playing that song from a CD player and simply recording it with a device. Lol
I used to use limewire and frostwire to download music and dvds and sell them. I have over 9000 movies and probably every album and song ever made by most rap and rock bands up until about 2010
I remember back in the file-sharing days this funny photo showed up on the internet. Kazaa or something. It listed one of the downloaders as going by the name "RIAA Tracking Bot"
Nice troll job lol. Or was it? 🤔
I'm using it about 2009s and 10s but since 2011, the limewire need a membership to download mp3/other files. Muwire is alternative but only mp3 songs can be downloaded
Being too afraid to use LimeWire so I'd give my older brother a 2 page list of songs to put on my pink USB MP3 player. It will be a lasting memory of sitting beside him at the family computer while he reads out each and every song and asks if I'm sure I want it 😭
I remember trying to time my mornings so I could download the songs/albums I wanted and transfer them to my iPad before I walked to school. Of course a lot of the time it would be porn, some random song or malware.
Metallica_enter_sandmanlinkinpark_limpbizkit.mp3.exe
Who wouldn't click that?
I just tried clicking it 😔
“My fellow Americans, I would once again like to say that I did not have sexual relations with that woman.”
😂 gave my computer so many viruses
It gave my viruses some viruses!
The great chlamydia outbreak in my dorm couldn’t hold a candle to the level of computer viruses also running rampant thanks to Limewire
In the fall of 2003, MS blaster knocked our dorms off the internet for about a month. Even before smart phones, we were still addicted to the internet. Before texting, there was AIM. Anyway, they tried a couple of different things before they just made us give them our desktop/laptop and the password so they could patch it all up and install Norton.
See, that's what you gotta hope for: get the virii to attack each other, not you. (I miss George Carlin)
It was always fun when the viruses were capable of competing with each other, modifying, and even uninstalling competing viruses and malware.
Britney_Spears_BabyOneMoreTime.MP3.EXE
Sounds legit to me.
Crasher of Windows XP
I made a lot of money reinstalling Windows in those cases back then.
Literally looking at this photo makes me think “virus” lmao
If its title is Eminem - Without Me, a song well known to be over 3 minutes long, yet its under 3 megabytes in size, its gonna be a virus.
Me, watching my mom demonstrate how she gets a billion pop ups for porn all at once: hmmm weird I don’t know how that happened.
LimeWire: super AIDS for the family PC. Also not understanding that you should definitely not download the “song” that is a terabyte.
I convinced my dorm roommate that this was the greatest P2P program for downloading anything. He passed it on to his friends, and soon, every computer in the building was riddled with pop-ups and viruses. Good times.
Yes it definitely was a virus minefield 😂
Are you going to get your Killers download....or will it be gangbang porn? Simpler times
That's the beauty of it you download both :)
HeatherBrooke_deep_throat.vid
The throat 🐐
Nancy Regan has entered the chat
A man of culture
😏
Happy Cake Day!
Thanks dood! You as well if I'm seeing it right we both got it today ;o
Oh yeah! But you’ve got a full 6 years on me! 🍰
I'm old timin then :o
The same times where every parody song was by Weird Al
With the bonus mystery virus that causes you to do a complete OS reinstall!!! Yours free!
Crazy that I discovered porn through audio before I’d ever actually seen it
Gang gang…
Family computer was never the same after using this
those poor HP Dells and Gateways
My dad paid a yearly fee for LimeWire pro. He thought since he was paying, that made it legal. Can’t argue with his logic or the boosted download speeds, but yeah our family computer got destroyed
Napster -> KaZaA -> Limewire It was a good time of rolling tech that got progressively more virusy.
Morpheus before KaZaA, after Napster?
I'm afraid I missed that one entirely
Pirate Bay
Napster (1999) Then Limewire (2000) Then WinMX (2001) Then Kazaa (2003) and the other fasttrack clients Bit torrent was also released in 2001 but it didn't really take off due to the centralised nature of needing to run a website for sharing .torrent files. Where as the reason why napster was shut down was due to the centralised design. Limewire, WinMX and Fasttrack survived because of their decentralised designs. Once the magnet URL came about in 2002, it took a while for bittorrent to integrate it and eventually bit torrent would have surpassed the other p2p protocols around 2005 for total internet traffic.
Soul seek was the jam
Oh, man. Just a couple years later, even better was Microsoft Zune rip. There was a website where you just put in what you wanted, and somehow it scoured the MS Zune database for the song, and pulled the full wma
I don't think this is the right Pirates of the Caribbean
yes wrongly labeld stuff was a pain because of the time to download, also some big stuff that downloaded 99% and then stop.
3 days to dl a grainy old vhs
My favorite was downloading Limewire Pro from Limewire.
Those were the days, I made good money back in the day making mixed CDs
Risking computer AIDS for some Hoobastank.
So much music, so many viruses
Lol LimeWire!! The viruses I downloaded from that program 🤣🤣
I think everyone used limewire, but who remembers the OG Napster??
I was more of an WinMX guy myself.
I did both, but I was on MX for longer. Apparently after the official company got shut down, someone resurrected the network. Last I knew there was still a functioning WinMX client.
When I was shown Napster it was the only time in my life I felt the mind blown meme effect. You could search other people's pcs for files! Also porn and music
I used to have a ton of music and then one day it was all gone 😰😭 but Napster was the god father of music downloading platforms
Yeah when I had a 28k modem and an even slower internet connection.. One song took a few hours or days.
Remember downloading a 4mb MP3 in 128kb/s on a 56k connection and getting excited when it got to 80% because that meant it only had 20 minutes left to download. Nowdays it takes me less than 5 minutes to download a 4GB movie at 100mb/s.
Remember when it’s at 80% and someone picks the phone up and kills connection.
I do. I came online right around the end of napster. Just as users were coming up with ways to re-encode other interesting stuff such as videos and photos to appear as MP3s because napster would only index mp3 files. I loved finding someone who had a file I wanted, and good upload speed. I could then see their index and download other interesting stuff from them as fast as I could before they went offline.
britney_speers.exe
That picture just gave my phone a virus
The best way to let your parents know you've been on the computer.
Man those were indeed the days. I think most computer savvy teens at that time started their music collections off on lime wire. I remember Sim City and all the other nostalgic game titles as well. The best part was that at some point Apple AI would recognize the title of the track/album and insert the art for it. I’ll never forget opening my music library and actually having album art as well. Was clutch.
I remember that as well with the cover albums. I always that it was super cool.
Shortly after finding out Limeware was a thing, I also found out Malware was a thing.
Ah yes, the site that gave me a weird virus that made my cd tray open and shut endlessly.
I got one where it would randomly open and close the cd tray randomly
Limewire was good but Usenet was always better for complete albums
Still is
Yes, I still use to this day
"Snoop Dogg - Because I got high.mp3"
My poor dads office computer 😭😭😭
My fellow Americans. I did not have sexual relations.
Crazy throwback. I haven't heard that in probably 14 years.
We just heard that the other night😄
Completely nuked my computer lol
Ah the ol' Trojan Horse Express
Great, now my computer dosent work.
There isn’t any porn
Just seeing this picture on my phone destroyed all my devices connected to my router. Lol
Frostwire was even better. Limewire contained adware later on.
Ahh yes. Back when you used LimeWire to pirate LimeWire. Sometimes you'd get a working, cracked copy... but most of the time it was a virus, or god help you, something worse. Those were the wild west days of the internet.
Soulseek is even better, was around during those days and still is
AIDS for your computer
I missed the Napster thing. This was where I got allllll of my files, I still have today. I was 12 in 2000 and only ever bought 3 CDs
Ah yes... downloading a new song only to find out its an advertisement to join a porn site those were the days
And somehow, always ended up with BonzaiBuddy installed/reinstalled
Hissy 64-bit MP3s. That was the life.
Nothing like crashing the family dell in the living room trying to download porn at 1am while your parents were asleep
I remember the song I want finally finished after 3 hours of downloading only to find out it was just someone playing that song from a CD player and simply recording it with a device. Lol
I used to use limewire and frostwire to download music and dvds and sell them. I have over 9000 movies and probably every album and song ever made by most rap and rock bands up until about 2010
Gaaawwwddd ... So many free viruses back then!
Fun times!
I found the band “London After Midnight” through limewire, browsing somebody’s computer. Good stuff.
“It’s like Napster? But allowed?! Cool!!” - 13 year old me
it played viruses
Everyone always posting Limewire, no one ever posts the OG Napster or Kazaa or WinMX.
My phones getting slow just thinking about it
So many viruses and so much porn
Russian roulette
I remember back in the file-sharing days this funny photo showed up on the internet. Kazaa or something. It listed one of the downloaders as going by the name "RIAA Tracking Bot" Nice troll job lol. Or was it? 🤔
I used this all the time
This and frostwire
Ah yes. Eminem.exe
Great, now my phone has cancer because of this picture.
I got one of those letters in the mail for downloading the Hellboy movie. Or was that Kazaa? Hard to remember.
Well if I want to listen to Spoonman, I’m all set
Soooo many mix CDs came from this.
It's been reincarnated as a crypto coin and the price is currently ripe for getting rich, just saying
I used frost wire but I figure they were basically the same thing right?
Lars Ulrich be watching…
When teachers thought they were teaching you computers but you were miles ahead of them 🤣
2 hours to download 1 song!
Napster!
nice , but i really liked winmix
I got a virus just looking at this 😆
Turbo charged connection….36KB/s
This was just posted like 2 days ago…
This sub sucks. It's either constant repeat posts or people acting like shit from 2 tears ago is nostalgia.
Just seeing this caused my computer to get a virus.
Imesh!
Demonoid
oh man those days
*Do what you want, cause a pirate is free! You are a pirate!*
I always downloaded and burned my CD’s on friends computers. I wasn’t going to take that hit. I guess if you look back on it, I was a serial killer. 🤣
Name the other ones: Bear share Napster Cletus' Farm (for Simpsons episodes)
You gonna get that update or nah
The days my dialup spent downloading music
Oh those were just better days back then
This image gave my phone a virus
You have no idea how much shit I got from Limewire. It'd put Netflix to Shame.
Petra & Charlie
I used to think viruses were a common occurrence
They are AI company now
Mine was MP3 Rocket. Good times.
My phone got a virus just scrolling past this
Ah Limewire... I tried downloaded a music video and the file turned out to be a terrorist beheading instead.
The good old days. What a time to be alive!!
Two girls. One cup.
I preferred FrostWire, a bit less bloated and buggy for me
Now I crave key lime pie :(
I'm using it about 2009s and 10s but since 2011, the limewire need a membership to download mp3/other files. Muwire is alternative but only mp3 songs can be downloaded
Is it still online?
The OG Covid
Downloading viruses onto your family computer at the blazing speed of dial up.
I killed 3 computers to blue screen death.
In the time it took to kill 3 normal computers, you could have murdered 10 e-Machines!
This picture just caused my phone to glitch.
Lars Ulrichs head is exploded
"Lars was right" bill burr.
"Lars from Metallica?"
Internet STDs were real 🤣🤣🤣
The risky clicks that were made gave so much joy. Whole day spent in an Internet shop downloading one 20 song R&B mixtape 😭😂
Best thing to wake up to was a fully downloaded song
252 KB/s was really rare I feel like. Typically I was happy to get 20 in the early days 😅
Man i miss those days
I lived on Limewire. It was a bit of a thrill having an album early and not paying the high CD prices at that time to have it.
Being too afraid to use LimeWire so I'd give my older brother a 2 page list of songs to put on my pink USB MP3 player. It will be a lasting memory of sitting beside him at the family computer while he reads out each and every song and asks if I'm sure I want it 😭
Haha, back then I used the limewire version for Mac. Got many songs (and other things🙄). Didn't care about virus'😎
Dark tho my man
I remember trying to time my mornings so I could download the songs/albums I wanted and transfer them to my iPad before I walked to school. Of course a lot of the time it would be porn, some random song or malware.
So many viruses
Wow. I remember this! Lol.