The early 2000s tool LimeWire used pirate episodes
As Americans rushed to share the “Inside CECOT” story, assuming CBS would work in the background to remove 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 who were surprised to see the peer-to-peer service best known for infecting parents' computers with viruses in the 2000s suddenly resurrected in 2025 to bypass feared U.S. government censorship.
“Yo what,” one user joked, emphasizing only the word “LimeWire.” Another user, who ironically used the LimeWire logo as his profile picture, replied: “man, who knew my nostalgic pro pic would become relevant again, WTF.”
LimeWire was founded in 2000 and quickly became one of the Internet's favorite services for pirating music until record labels received a court order in 2010 that blocked all file sharing functionality. As the Reddit thread noted, some LimeWire users were personally targeted by lawsuits.
After the order, some users kept the service alive for a while by using older versions of the software that were not 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 government-suppressed reporting is absolute cyberpunk shit,” one Bluesky user wrote.
“We need a champion against darkness,” echoed one Reddit commenter. “I side with LimeWire.”
