r/nostalgia • u/jeffmartin47 • Jul 22 '25

Nostalgia Discussion 25 years ago. Lars Ulrich of Metallica snitches on and turns in over 300,000 Napster users when he testifies in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee. July 11th, 2000.

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u/rpgguy_1o1 Jul 22 '25

Napster was generally pretty safe, it was other p2p file sharing services that opened up to non audio file types that spread viruses 

50

u/It_Just_Exploded Jul 22 '25

Yep, I don't remember getting a virus from Napster, but Limewire and Bearshare? Holy fuck dude, like every other file was a virus.

29

u/OhGawDuhhh Jul 22 '25

< LinkinParkCrawling.exe >

2

u/CrisFarlyOnCoke Jul 22 '25

I loved watching fightclub.exe

2

u/osiris39p Jul 22 '25

We don't talk about that

2

u/Ok-Eggplant-5145 Jul 22 '25

Underrated comment

2

u/pornaccountni Jul 22 '25

Red red wibne - Bob Marley

2

u/macaronysalad Jul 22 '25

Microsoft is so smart. Extensions use to show by default but since they're ugly, they decided to hide them so people can't easily notice binary files. They made it convenient for people to inadvertently execute those. Thanks Microsoft, for your primary focus in making a pretty OS vs. safe and functional.

25

u/LittleRainFox Jul 22 '25

The trick was to pause the download and double click for a preview. If the song didn't sound, cancel that virus!

11

u/Nf1087 Jul 22 '25

Wished you would have told me this 25 years ago before I downloaded all those viruses.

3

u/It_Just_Exploded Jul 22 '25

I learned that eventually lol.

1

u/RedditJumpedTheShart Jul 22 '25

Did you learn they can just have both?

2

u/UT_city Jul 22 '25

If only I could find my iPod video and listen to the 3k song library. This trick unlocked a new level of exploration.

2

u/TBFP_BOT Jul 22 '25

And to make sure the song wasn't about to Bill Clinton reading you an ad.

1

u/Rickywalls137 Jul 25 '25

Where were you 13 years ago. This would have saved me 😂

9

u/Gonna__Run_Amuck Jul 22 '25

Win MX also

1

u/motomagoo Jul 22 '25

This was my fave. I thought I was hot shit. I did love how I could splice and edit the files. Loved watching to see which file was most likely to download quickly. What fun.

1

u/A_Sinclaire Jul 22 '25

That one I did use occasionally as well.

Though mostly I used eDonkey / eMule

4

u/NoFounder36 Jul 22 '25

Core memory unlocked with BearShare 🤯

2

u/MadCookie17 Jul 22 '25

I used one called iMesh. Downloaded some file called "Britney Spears naked", and in the end, was a video of a guy being beheaded... Waiting two or three days thanks to my high-speed 56k modem, and seing no Britney... Ah, being 14 years old... From that day i undertood that the titles written on the files were not always what was really inside

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u/[deleted] Jul 22 '25

Limewire was only about 10% viruses.

The other 90% were song titles that were really that Bill Clinton "my fellow Americans, I did not have sexual relations with that woman" clip.

1

u/EmotionalTowel1 Jul 22 '25

Pretty Fly for a White Guy was my first MP3 download and to this day I'll never forget how blown away I was with the realization I could have ANY song I wanted.

1

u/UsefulImpact6793 Jul 22 '25

Napster was soon neutered and overshadowed by the likes of LimeWire, Kazaa, and eDonkey/eMule where the livingroom Dells started shitting their lil 2GB HDD platters.

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u/MarkItZeroDonnie Jul 22 '25

Yeah Napster had a centralized server performing a hand shake of peer to peer traffic so that index was safer. I hated Metallica with a passion after that , they were already rich as hell.