Carl Lundstrom, Who Backed the File-Sharing Site Pirate Bay, Dies in Plane Crash

New York Times

14-03-2025

Carl Lundstrom, the heir to a Swedish crisp bread fortune who financed the Pirate Bay, a notorious file-sharing service that was popular in the mid-2000s, was killed on Monday in a small plane crash in Slovenia, according to Alternative for Sweden, the far-right party that he supported.
Mr. Lundstrom, 64, was the pilot and sole occupant of the plane, a Mooney M20, which had taken off from Zagreb, the Croatian capital, and was en route to Zurich, the party said in a statement.
Air traffic controllers reported that they had lost contact with the plane in the mountainous Velika Planina area of northern Slovenia, according to the Slovenian police.
Extremely bad weather made it impossible for rescuers to use helicopters, forcing them to take a gondola and then hike on foot to reach the remote crash site, the police said. They discovered pieces of the plane lodged in a wooden hut, which was practically cut in half, the police said.
A body was later found amid the rubble, said the police, who added that the cause of the crash had not been determined.
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, which allow users to download large digital files by enlisting the help of other computers.
The Pirate Bay, which provided links to thousands of songs, movies and video games, was once estimated to have more than 20 million users.
Industry groups like the Motion Picture Association accused the site of making a mockery of copyright laws, and Swedish prosecutors took action.
In 2008, they charged Mr. Lundstrom and the site's three founders with having facilitated copyright infringement by helping users download music, movies and other copyrighted material.
The Pirate Bay trial unfolded amid a carnival-like atmosphere in Stockholm, with bands playing outside the courtroom and bloggers documenting every step of the proceedings.
Mr. Lundstrom and his co-defendants, Frederik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg and Peter Sunde, maintained that they were not violating copyright law because they did not actually host any of the copyrighted material on their own servers.
During the trial, a prosecutor tried to tie Mr. Lundstrom to the Pirate Bay as a 'co-owner,' but he testified that he had only sold hosting and internet services to the site's operators, Wired magazine reported in 2009.
Mr. Lundstrom acknowledged giving the Pirate Bay's operators moral support and sympathy, Wired reported, but said he had not become their business partner, finding the prospect legally risky.
A Swedish court convicted Mr. Lundstrom and his co-defendants in 2009 and sentenced them each to a year in prison.
They were also ordered to pay 30 million kronor, or about $3.6 million at the time, in damages to leading entertainment companies, including Warner Brothers, Sony Music Entertainment, EMI and Columbia Pictures.
An appeals court later upheld the convictions of Mr. Lundstrom, Mr. Neij and Mr. Sunde, but reduced their sentences to between four and 10 months and raised the amount they had to pay in damages to 46 million kronor, or about $6.5 million at the time.
Mr. Warg did not participate in the appeal, citing an illness.
The verdict was a major victory for the entertainment industry in its campaign to curb online piracy on sites like Napster, which became hugely popular in the late 1990s and early 2000s.
'We are not triumphant,' John Kennedy, the chief executive of the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, said after Mr. Lundstrom and his co-defendants were convicted. 'But we are satisfied that the court has clearly said that what they were doing was wrong.'
In addition to his role in the Pirate Bay, Mr. Lundstrom was a longtime supporter of right-wing causes in Sweden. He helped back a movement against allowing refugees to settle in Sjöbo, a town on the southern tip of Sweden, in the late 1980s, Alternative for Sweden said in its statement.
When Alternative for Sweden, an anti-immigrant party, was formed in 2018, Mr. Lundstrom became involved as a district manager and then as an unsuccessful candidate for 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 lecturer in the Department of Political Science at Lund University in Sweden.
'Lundstrom's overt political life was spent in far-right circles, but with limited impact,' he said in an email.