The early 2000s was a beautiful time for piracy, and music download service LimeWire was one of the best. How else were you going to fill up your new MP3 that doubled as a USB stick? By downloading a few songs and viruses disguised as songs, of course!
It’s been 11 years since LimeWire perished, and no one has really missed it, even if they claim they do. (They actually just miss being young.) Nevertheless, the service is back, and it’s no longer about piracy. Instead, It’s about another sketchy service: NFTs!
Why is LimeWire selling NFTs?
Following the acquisition of LimeWire’s IP by Austrian entrepreneurs Paul and Julian Zehetmayr last year, the piracy platform is back… sans piracy. In a surprise turn, the retro revival is aimed at the opposite of digital piracy, NFTs. That’s right, spending thousands, if not millions, on a JPEG of an Ape for a faux sense of ownership.
LimeWire is now am NFT marketplace in the same vein as Opensea. Instead of allowing you to download music for free like the chad LimeWire, this sad version lets you pay for NFTs of musicians. What a downgrade.
Initially, the new platform supports a number of less-than-cared-about musical NFTs. The first wave of NFTs are attached to names such as “Travis Barker, Brandy, Nicky Jam, Soulja Boy.” Do people still care about Soulja Boy?
The new marketplace also has NFTs in the form of “Originals” which are exclusive to the platform. These are the same crude pixel art profiles seen on most cryptoart marketplaces. This means that they’re not very good and certainly not worth money.
Weirdly, the new service also aims to act like a form of auction website to flog musicians’ unwanted goods. For example, a Travis Barker NFT of a drum set he used is actually a clever way of him flogging the real drum set at the same time.
Read More: NFT loans are now a thing, as disgusting as that sounds
Fans vow to pirate NFTs
In the early 2000s, LimeWire stood as a service of rebellion. Now, this revived service doesn’t have a rebellious bone in its body, and fans aren’t having it.
In response to gene reveal of the NFT platform, fans of the original service have vowed to pirate the platform’s NFTs. Essentially, they’ll be right-clicking or saving NFTs on the service, because that’s all you need to do.
In fact, fans might not even have to do it at all! With services like The NFT Bay already saving every NFT for us, cryptoart is pirated as soon as it releases. Obviously, professionally, we at Stealth Optional do not support piracy, but The NFT Bay is an interesting website.
Of course, it’s not certain how long this new NFT platform will last anyways. This recent launch comes amid a horrendous year for crypto with two crashes almost back-to-back. Perhaps they should’ve joined the industry, oh, like a year ago.