Carl Lundstrom, the inheritor to a Swedish crisp bread fortune who financed the Pirate Bay, a infamous file-sharing service that was standard within the mid-2000s, was killed on Monday in a small airplane crash in Slovenia, in response to Various for Sweden, the far-right get together that he supported.
Mr. Lundstrom, 64, was the pilot and sole occupant of the airplane, a Mooney M20, which had taken off from Zagreb, the Croatian capital, and was en path to Zurich, the get together mentioned in a press release.
Air visitors controllers reported that they’d misplaced contact with the airplane within the mountainous Velika Planina space of northern Slovenia, in response to the Slovenian police.
Extraordinarily dangerous climate made it not possible for rescuers to make use of helicopters, forcing them to take a gondola after which hike on foot to achieve the distant crash website, the police mentioned. They found items of the airplane lodged in a wood hut, which was virtually reduce in half, the police mentioned.
A physique was later discovered amid the rubble, mentioned the police, who added that the reason for the crash had not been decided.
Mr. Lundstrom was a grandson of the founding father of the Swedish crisp bread model Wasabröd, and an inheritor to the corporate fortune, in response to Swedish media studies.
He was a financier of the Pirate Bay, which was based in Sweden in 2003 and have become one of many largest so-called Bit Torrent trackers, which permit customers to obtain massive digital recordsdata by enlisting the assistance of different computer systems.
The Pirate Bay, which supplied hyperlinks to 1000’s of songs, motion pictures and video video games, was as soon as estimated to have greater than 20 million customers.
Business teams just like the Movement Image Affiliation accused the positioning of creating a mockery of copyright legal guidelines, and Swedish prosecutors took motion.
In 2008, they charged Mr. Lundstrom and the positioning’s three founders with having facilitated copyright infringement by serving to customers obtain music, motion pictures and different copyrighted materials.
The Pirate Bay trial unfolded amid a carnival-like environment in Stockholm, with bands taking part in exterior the courtroom and bloggers documenting each step of the proceedings.
Mr. Lundstrom and his co-defendants, Frederik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg and Peter Sunde, maintained that they weren’t violating copyright regulation as a result of they didn’t truly host any of the copyrighted materials on their very own servers.
In the course of the trial, a prosecutor tried to tie Mr. Lundstrom to the Pirate Bay as a “co-owner,” however he testified that he had solely offered internet hosting and web providers to the positioning’s operators, Wired journal reported in 2009.
Mr. Lundstrom acknowledged giving the Pirate Bay’s operators ethical assist and sympathy, Wired reported, however mentioned he had not change into their enterprise associate, discovering the prospect legally dangerous.
A Swedish courtroom convicted Mr. Lundstrom and his co-defendants in 2009 and sentenced them every to a yr in jail.
They have been additionally ordered to pay 30 million kronor, or about $3.6 million on the time, in damages to main leisure corporations, together with Warner Brothers, Sony Music Leisure, EMI and Columbia Photos.
An appeals courtroom later upheld the convictions of Mr. Lundstrom, Mr. Neij and Mr. Sunde, however decreased their sentences to between 4 and 10 months and raised the quantity they needed to pay in damages to 46 million kronor, or about $6.5 million on the time.
Mr. Warg didn’t take part within the enchantment, citing an sickness.
The decision was a significant victory for the leisure business in its marketing campaign to curb on-line piracy on websites like Napster, which turned massively standard within the late Nineties and early 2000s.
“We aren’t triumphant,” John Kennedy, the chief govt of the Worldwide Federation of the Phonographic Business, mentioned after Mr. Lundstrom and his co-defendants have been convicted. “However we’re glad that the courtroom has clearly mentioned that what they have been doing was mistaken.”
Along with his function within the Pirate Bay, Mr. Lundstrom was a longtime supporter of right-wing causes in Sweden. He helped again a motion towards permitting refugees to settle in Sjöbo, a city on the southern tip of Sweden, within the late Eighties, Various for Sweden mentioned in its assertion.
When Various for Sweden, an anti-immigrant get together, was shaped in 2018, Mr. Lundstrom turned concerned as a district supervisor after which as an unsuccessful candidate for workplace, the get together mentioned.
It referred to as him “a legend and veteran of Swedish nationalism.”
However Mr. Lundstrom was higher identified for his function within the Pirate Bay, mentioned Mikael Sundstrom, a senior lecturer within the Division of Political Science at Lund College in Sweden.
“Lundstrom’s overt political life was spent in far-right circles, however with restricted affect,” he mentioned in an e mail.