Carl Lundstrom, the heir to a Swedish crisp bread funding that funded the pirate Gulf, a notorious file sharing service that was popular in the mid -2000s, was killed on Monday in a small air crash in Slovenia, according to Slovenia.
Mr Lundstrom, 64, was the pilot and the only passenger of the plane, a Mooney M20, who had taken off from Zagreb, the Croatian capital and was on the road to Zurich, the party said in a statement.
Air traffic auditors reported that they had lost contact with the plane in the Velika Planina mountainous area of northern Slovenia, according to Slovenian police.
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 remote crash area, police said. They discovered pieces of the plane heading to a wooden hut, which was essentially cut in half, police said.
One body was later found in the ruins, police said, adding that the cause of the conflict had not been determined.
Mr Lundstrom was the grandson of the founder of the Swedish brand crunchy bread Wasabröd and Fortune’s heir, according to Swedish media reports.
He was the funder of Pirate Bay, founded in Sweden in 2003 and became one of the largest so -called Torrent trackers, who allow users to download large digital records, identifying other computers.
The pirate Gulf, which provided links to thousands of songs, films and video games, is once estimated that it has more than 20 million users.
Industrial groups, such as the Cinema Association, accused the site of making an illusion of copyright laws and Swedish prosecutors took action.
In 2008, they charge Mr Lundstrom and the three founders of the site, facilitating copyright violations, helping users download music, films and other copyright protected material.
The Pirate Bay test unfolded in a carnival -like atmosphere in Stockholm, with bands playing outside the courtroom and bloggers documenting every step of the process.
Mr Lundstrom and his colleagues, Frederik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg and Peter Sunde, argued that they did not violate copyright law because they did not host any copyrights on their own servers.
During the trial, a prosecutor tried to link Mr Lundstrom to the pirate Gulf as a “co -owner”, but testified that he had only sold hosting and services on the internet to the site’s operators, Wired Magazine said in 2009.
Mr Lundstrom acknowledged that it gave Pirate Bay operators moral support and sympathy, Wired, but said they had not become their business partner, finding the prospect of the legally dangerous.
A Swedish court sentenced Mr Lundstrom and his trade unionists in 2009 and sentenced them to one year in prison.
They were also ordered to pay 30 million Kronor, or about $ 3.6 million at the time, in losses to leading entertainment companies such as Warner Brothers, Sony Music Entertainment, EMI and Columbia Pictures.
A Court of Appeal later confirmed the convictions of Mr Lundstrom, Mr Neij and Mr Sunde, but reduced their penalties between four and 10 months and increased the amount they had to pay to 46 million Kronor or about $ 6.5 million at that time.
Mr Warg did not participate in the appeal, citing a disease.
The verdict was an important victory for the entertainment industry in its campaign to limit piracy on the internet to locations such as Napster, which became extremely popular in the late 1990s and early 2000s.
“We are not triumphant,” said John Kennedy, chief executive of the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, after being convicted by Mr Lundstrom and his trade unionists. “But we are pleased that the court has clearly said that what they were doing was wrong.”
In addition to his role in Pirate Bay, Mr Lundstrom was a long -term supporter of the right -wing causes in Sweden. It has helped support a movement against allowing refugees to settle on Sjöbo, a city on the south end of Sweden in the late 1980s, the alternative to Sweden said in its statement.
When the alternative to Sweden, an anti-immigrant party, was formed in 2018, Mr Lundstrom participated as a area manager and then as an unsuccessful candidate for office, the party said.
He called him “legend and veteran of Swedish nationalism”.
But Mr Lundstrom was known for his role in Pirate Bay, said Mikael Sundstrom, a senior lecturer in the Department of Political Science at Lund University in Sweden.
“Lundstrom’s obvious political life was spent on far -right circles, but with a limited impact,” he said in an email.
