Celebrate the death of your old computer with this LimeWire oral history

Mel Magazine has put together an oral history on file-sharing program Limewire that contains the following fun fact: “Out of 123 randomly downloaded files on LimeWire, 37 of them contained malware.” That certainly seems like a lot, but to everyone who ever had to run to their parents and explain that they were doing absolutely nothing wrong when the family computer suddenly started to self-destruct (“I was doing homework and somebody must’ve snuck into the house and tried to illegally download Linkin Park songs!”), that actually sounds a little low. Either way, that’s one of a few interesting details in the piece, which touches on how LimeWire rose from the ashes of Napster to become one of the most popular outlets for piracy across the whole internet and even a failed attempt to legitimize LimeWire into a Spotify-style subscription service.