Carl Lundstrom, the heir of a Swedish crispy bread Fortune that financed the Pirate Bay, a notorious service for sharing files that was popular in the mid -2000s, was killed on Monday in a small plane crash in Slovenia, according to alternative to Sweden, the distant party he supported.
Mr. Lundstrom, 64, was the pilot and the only occupant of the plane, a Moeney M20, who had taken from Zagreb, the Croatian capital, and was on the way to Zurich, the party said in a statement.
Air traffic controllers reported that, according to the Slovenian police, they had lost contact with the plane in the mountainous Velika Planina area of North Slovenia.
Extremely bad weather made it impossible for rescuers to use helicopters, forcing them to take a gondola and then walk on foot to reach the external crash site, the police said. They discovered pieces of the plane in a wooden hut, which was practically cut in two, the police said.
A body was later found in the midst of the rubble, said that the police, who added that the cause of the crash was not established.
Mr. Lundstrom was a grandson of the founder of the Swedish Crisp Bread brand Wasabröd, and an heir to the company Fortune, according to Swedish media reports.
He was a financier of the Pirate Bay, which was founded in Sweden in 2003 and became one of the largest so-called bit torrent trackers, with which users could download large digital files by calling in the help of other computers.
The Pirate Bay, who offered links to thousands of songs, films and video games, was once estimated at more than 20 million users.
Industrial groups such as the Motion Picture Association accused the site of making a spot of copyright laws, and Swedish public prosecutors took action.
In 2008 they charged Mr Lundstrom and the three founders of the site with a facilitation of copyright infringement by helping users download music, films and other copyrighted material.
The Pirate Bay test unfolded in the midst of a carnival-like atmosphere in Stockholm, with bands that play outside the courtroom and bloggers who document every step of the procedure.
Mr. Lundstrom and his co -suspects, Frederik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg and Peter Sunde, claimed that they did not violate copyright legislation because they did not organize any of the copyrighted material on their own servers.
During the trial, a public prosecutor tried to bind Mr Lundstrom to Pirate Bay as a 'co-owner', but he testified that he had only sold hosting and internet services to the operators of the site, Wired Magazine reported in 2009.
Mr. Lundstrom acknowledged that the Pirate Bay operators gave the moral support and sympathy of the Pirate Bay, Wired reported, but said he had not become their business partner and found the prospect legal.
A Swedish court condemned Mr Lundstrom and his co -suspects in 2009 and each sentenced them to a year in prison.
They were also instructed to pay 30 million Kronor, or at that time about $ 3.6 million, due to compensation to leading entertainment companies, including Warner Brothers, Sony Music Entertainment, EMI and Columbia Pictures.
A Court of Appeal later maintained the convictions of Mr Lundstrom, Mr Neij and Mr. Sunde, but reduced their penalties to between four and 10 months and increased the amount they had to pay for damage to 46 million Kronor, or at that time about $ 6.5 million.
Mr. Warg did not participate in the profession and quoted a disease.
The verdict was a big win for the entertainment industry in its campaign to curb online piracy on sites such as Napster, which became extremely popular in the late 1990s and early 2000s.
“We are not triumphant,” said John Kennedy, the chief executive of the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, after Mr Lundstrom and his co -suspects were convicted. “But we are convinced that the court clearly said that what they were doing was wrong.”
In addition to his role in the Pirate Bay, Mr. Lundstrom was an old proponent of right -wing causes in Sweden. He helped a movement against allowing refugees to settle in Sjöbo, a city on the southern point of Sweden, in the late 1980s, said alternative to Sweden in his statement.
When the alternative to Sweden, an anti-immigrant party, was founded in 2018, Mr. Lundstrom was involved as a district manager and then as a failed candidate for the office, the party said.
It called him “a legend and veteran of Swedish nationalism.”
But Mr. Lundstrom was better known for his role in the Pirate Bay, said Mikael Sundstrom, a senior teacher from the political science department at Lund University in Sweden.
“The open political life of Lundstrom was spent in the extreme right-wing circles, but with a limited impact,” he said in an e-mail.
