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    “Yo what?” LimeWire re-emerges in online rush to share pulled “60 Minutes” segment | Redditor jokes LimeWire is now a “champion against the darkness.”
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    “Yo what?” LimeWire re-emerges in online rush to share pulled “60 Minutes” segment | Redditor jokes LimeWire is now a “champion against the darkness.”


    “Yo what?” LimeWire re-emerges in online rush to share pulled “60 Minutes” segment | Redditor jokes LimeWire is now a “champion against the darkness.”

    https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/12/yo-what-limewire-re-emerges-in-online-rush-to-share-pulled-60-minutes-segment/

    View 43 Comments

    43 Comments

    1. Hrmbee on

      One of the more interesting sections:

      >As Americans scrambled to share the “Inside CECOT” story, assuming that CBS would be working in the background to pull down uploads, a once-blacklisted tool from the early 2000s became a reliable way to keep the broadcast online.
      >
      >On Reddit, users shared links to a LimeWire torrent, prompting chuckles from people surprised to see the peer-to-peer service best known for infecting parents’ computers with viruses in the 2000s suddenly revived in 2025 to skirt feared US government censorship.
      >
      >“Yo what,” one user joked, highlighting only the word “LimeWire.” Another user, ironically using the LimeWire logo as a profile picture, responded, “man, who knew my nostalgia prof pic would become relevant again, WTF.”
      >
      >LimeWire was created in 2000 and quickly became one of the Internet’s favorite services for pirating music until record labels won a 2010 injunction that blocked all file-sharing functionality. As the Reddit thread noted, some LimeWire users were personally targeted in lawsuits.
      >
      >For a while after the injunction, a fraction of users kept the service alive by running older versions of the software that weren’t immediately disabled. New owners took over LimeWire in 2022, officially relaunching the service. The service’s about page currently notes that “millions of individuals and businesses” use the global file-sharing service today, but for some early Internet users, the name remains a blast from the past.
      >
      >“Bringing back LimeWire to illegally rip copies of reporting suppressed by the government is definitely some cyberpunk shit,” a Bluesky user wrote.
      >
      >“We need a champion against the darkness,” a Reddit commenter echoed. “I side with LimeWire.”

      What a blast from the past. I guess even in tech sometimes everything old is new again.

    4. Baby-IM-Back on

      Woah, I haven’t heard that name in years.. I remember limewire and frostwire.. cool to see that limewire is coming back.

    6. Koskani on

      Limewire is how I learned to fix PCs.

      Once I bricked my mom’s laptop I had exactly 1 afternoon to get that shit working again or get my ass beat lmfao

    8. ipub on

      All I ever got from limewire were mislabeled Hollywood movies of questionable content and computer viruses so this tracks.

    11. omni1000 on

      The FBI sent me a letter saying I owed a lot of money for each download I did back around 2000. It was something like a $1000 penalty for each download. That was it for me and Limewire.

    13. Hrekires on

      RIP to a GOAT

      I miss the way you could browse around other users’ libraries, it was the way I found so much new music in college. You’d find whatever song you were originally searching for, look around at the uploaders other files because you had similar tastes, and next thing you knew you’d be downloading the demo album from some random band in Ohio that never made it beyond playing local bar shows.

    14. Knyfe-Wrench on

      I saw that this morning. Reddit posts based on news stories based on reddit posts based on new stories…

    15. TweakedNipple on

      The last thing I downloaded from limewire was a “Jennifer Aniston Brad Pitt Sex tape”. It took me a few days to get it. When I finally did it was just a 30min video of some guy masturbating. I have learned a lot since then.

    26. Cool-Cow9712 on

      Using lime wire was very similar to unprotected sex back of the day. You were really rolling the dice, and my dumb ass did it often.
      Not the sex part, the getting viruses frequently on my computer

    27. ApathyMoose on

      Grabbed it from a torrent and put it on my plex. I’ll be seeding it for a very long time. Screw trump and his fascist regime.

    28. xLimewireX on

      What a wild time to be alive, born just in time to see the birth of limewire, the death, and the resurrection

    30. Spacebotzero on

      An ancient machine that still serves a purpose…used to defeat the darkest of enemies in the early ages is once again called upon.

    31. xXx_RAMROD_xXx on

      Please help me guys.

      I downloaded the new 60 minutes special but when I try to play it all I can hear is Crank That Soulja Boy

    38. didact on

      I mean, it’s already on all the top public trackers, sitting out in DHT as well for those who index it. I’m seeding it… Dunno why LimeWire is necessary.

    40. menacingsparrow on

      Do we really think it was an accident that it was shared online in Canada? It’s a pretty convenient way to not get in shit while actually getting your story out.

    41. thanks_thief on

      The Limewire name was purchased by some tech bro scammers a few years ago, it has no relation to the previous company.

      I worked on the original Limewire and I have some stories. Despite it’s somewhat seedy reputation, we had a beautiful office near tribeca in manhattan. One time our CEO got into a fist fight with an employee because the employee kept trying to argue that charles manson was actually a misunderstood genius

    42. petrolly on

      Great job Bari for getting a 60 minutes segment far more reach than would have otherwise been the case.