Using Limewire to pirate Limewire Pro
And it was GPL, so it wasn’t even copyright infringement.
I have never used Limewire, but if they had distributed binaries that you should pay for, it is a copyright infringement, even if you could technically compile it yourself. There are applications that do this and it’s compatible with GPL license.
AFAIK the GPL does not forbid selling binaries in any way. You have to provide the sources of course.
And when you downloaded “Yoursong.mp3.exe” you knew you were about to have the best day ever!
(To this day it amazes me how so many people don’t pay attention to file types and keeps them hidden.)
I blame Windows, as it (I believe) hid file extensions of known file types by default. Was it, because it was aesthetically more pleasing? I dunno but it sure was a hazard for the unaware user.
Their entire security model depends on knowing file extensions, but they still hide them. Even if you enable it, there are some extensions that still won’t show, like .lnk (shortcut file). You can absolutely have executable code, and therefore malware in a .lnk file.
I believe there were also files like “yoursong.mp3 .exe” (not sure how this will render, but lots of spaces before the .exe so it would be hidden by the UI even if extensions weren’t hidden).
Custom icons didn’t help either, since they could just use the default icon for the spoofed file type. Though using a different program that changed the icon would negate that and make any of them obvious.
Also helps to use a method other than double clicking the file to open it, like drag and drop. Which was my usual flow with mp3s anyways because I generally added them to my massive playlist and double clicking risked replacing my playlist (that might have not been saved in forever) with a playlist with just that single song.
I liked it when winamp added the media library. Took me forever to rate my songs, but eventually my “new song flow” was move the new album folder to the artist’s folder in my music folder then tell winamp to rescan for new files, and then import my 3+ star or unrated songs as my playlist, played on shuffle. And occasionally grab a new format plugin if the album was encoded as something new and rescan until the new songs show up. Then give any noise or gag tracks 1 or 2 stars so they don’t make it to my main list after the first listen.
I believe there were also files like “yoursong.mp3 .exe” (not sure how this will render, but lots of spaces before the .exe so it would be hidden by the UI even if extensions weren’t hidden).
Replace your double-quotes with backticks, like this:
yoursong.mp3 .exe.
While it’s super annoying for the tech savvy, and gives a great opportunity to ill willed tech people, I’m sure it was an idiot proofing move. The average user is a not-so-tech-savvy office person, having relatively fuck all knowledge on extensions, and back in the time pretty much all programs got picky when facing an unknown/unsupported extension. Your average Joe/Jolene opened ‘veryimportantspreadsheet.xls’, renamed it to ‘veryimportantspreadsheetnew’ (without the extension), and made it impossible for Excel to open it by double clicking. Then in the best case they triggered an IT support request; in the worst case they reported that the very important spreadsheet got lost/corrupted and data was lost.
And most porn was that middle eastern dude getting his head cut off.
I remember actually searching that one out to see. Strange what you’ll do when you’re a teenager.
Was that the Chechen rebel video because I hated that
Fuck you for triggering that memory.
I can still hear the sounds he made.
Among many other misattributed MP3s I downloaded off LimeWire, I remember downloading an mp3 of a “new leaked Nine Inch Nails song” called “Digital” that even had an intro read by a some DJ on a radio station (supposedly).
It ended up not being Nine Inch Nails, but I loved the song anyway, and had no idea what it was until a decade later when I found it again online. Still fuckin rocks too:
Boom Boom Satellites - Push Eject
I also remember a Tetris Theme remix by Aphex Twin that was very much not Aphex Twin.
I also remember downloading the Aphex Twin remix of Beck’s "Devil’s Haircut"and the remix was so bad I thought it had to be fake (it’s not).
I actually still have songs in my playlist that I discovered the same way. A lot of the saints were incorrectly labeled so it was hard to make sure you got the right one without listening to it. Found a lot of unknown artists this way.
Somewhere in my files I still have the file of a hoarse, cracked male voice singing along to Ricky Martin’s “Bailamos”, purportedly recorded from Martin’s mic by a sound tech when he was lip synching live on stage.
Probably fake, but I want to believe.
Dude what is this Tetris one. I remember this too.
I also remember some some that was by a dj called dj triangle and it was a super high tempo song with all kinds of songs mixed in. Haven’t found it since those days.
Fake system of a down - link song was golden.
Download Worms.exe
I just wanted to play worms
Liero was an amazing contender
Duuuude. I just decided to look this up on chatgpt. I had no idea that was NOT system of a down. Sounds exactly like serj lol. I used to crank that shit. Be sure link. He come to town. Come to save! The princess Zelda!
please don’t “Look things up” on chatgpt, use an actual search engine…
Lol, like google?
But I agree, chatgpt is not a search engine. It’s a waste of time using it as one
haha that’s funny. Sorry to break the news though.
Link - he come to town He come to save - the princess Zelda
We all on here pretending Napster wasn’t the OG? The transition to kazaa was painful.
Napster was so early that most folks didn’t have the bandwidth and CPU speed to deal with decent-quality video yet, so it initially only did MP3s. I think some folks forget about it because they didn’t get into the piracy scene until they could get TV shows/movies/software etc.
I vividly remember spending twenty minutes downloading a single song over my 56k modem 🥲
No, the real problem was that Napster had central servers that could easily be taken down via litigation. Limewire was fully P2P so there was no single point of failure.
That’s why Napster went away (possibly before people late to the party had a chance to use it), but it didn’t stop it from being “the OG.”
I still have a few folders of music from Napster.
That belongs in a museum!
So do I.
We all on here pretending Napster wasn’t the OG? The transition to kazaa was painful.
Napster was feature poor though. CuteMX was much, much better and out while Napster was still running, but it closed down after Napster lost the court case. Feature set was closer to Kazaa, including filters and being able to browse a user’s shares.
It was FREE.
But at what cost?
EVERYTHING!
I did download a car
I feel like I have more availability to get what I want now, than when I was using Limewire/Kazaa/Napster/eMule/etc.
If it was super popular, you could get it. If it was obscure, uncommon, niche, and other synonyms, if you did find it 90% of the time it was simply given an incorrect name and wasn’t actually what you wanted.
I used to have a demonoid account and kept my seed ratio high just because that private tracker had the biggest collection of random ass music and movies you couldn’t find anywhere else. Unreleased shit and whatnot.
Private trackers have gotten way better. I think they’ve figured out how to retain obscure and rare things. At least RED, GGn, OPH, BTN and PTP have. I’m sure there are others.
Come back to torrenting if you feel trapped by subscriptions and enshittification. There is a bar to entry, but it ain’t too bad.
I do miss the weird fake tracks. There was a whole 3rd “Portishead” album that fake.
I kinda wanna look up who actually made that “Link, he come to town!” song. Because it sure as hell was not System of a Down. lol
Know anyone with invites to acid lounge? I let my account lapse for like 5 years, and cannot get back in, bo matter how many attempts at requesting.
I used to have a demonoid account too! Back then I could just torrent anything without a care…
Now I would need a VPN and a ton of reading to even begin. Sad times.
If it was obscure, uncommon, niche, and other synonyms, if you did find it 90% of the time it was simply given an incorrect name and wasn’t actually what you wanted.
This is literally how I got introduced to several bands I never would have heard otherwise. Missing one track off one album, downloading…this definitely isn’t the right track, but who is this? And now I need to download another 8 albums by that band…
Define free? Constant viruses, trauma from seeing killings and executions. Was it worth it? Sure but it wasn’t free
Can’t make an omelette without breaking a few eggs. Learning to torrent is what greatly increased my computer literacy when I was a kid.
Or dumb songs with swooshes in them lol
And sometimes things you really really didn’t want.
Hey does anyone remember searching for the movie XXX with Vin Diesel? What a fun time…
Came here to mention soulseek
I was using Soulseek in 2005 just before Boards of Canada put out The Campfire Headphase, and I must have grabbed a fake because the version I heard sounded nothing like them and I didn’t care for it. Many years later I would realize my mistake, and the real thing is my favorite album of theirs, but I still wonder what that fakeout album actually was.
BoC!!! 🩵🥂
FUCK, YEAH!!!
My PC got AIDS once from Limewire Lite, true story.
EDIT : it was Kazaa had a lite version, not Limewire. Good days lol.
Step 1. Download Kazaa Lite Step 2. Use Kazaa Lite to download Kazaa Step 3. Profit
.
More treacherous than LimeWire was? I think the fuck not, that boi was filled with Justin_Bieber_Baby.mp3.exe’s
That stuff is so easy to deal with, 1 its fucking obvious its a .exe and second you can just run it in a VM. What, is your PC going to struggle running a VM that only has to run audio or video?
It’s considerably easier to deal with these days so the seas are less treacherous. Even Windows’ default antivirus will catch most of those too.
In what way?
.
The government will snitch on you to who? A foreign government?
.
Yeah, ISPs are usually under pressure to obey the copyright holders. But VPNs should always be used.
That’s the point though, basically no-one used VPNs back in the day.
Now its basically required.
Today it’s harder, not more dangerous.
But also everything is darker.
Misattribution killed Limewire. Downloading a song that turned out to be something different was annoying, but downloaded porn sometimes turned out to be actual CP.
