back to article Pirate Bay financier and far-right activist Carl Lundström dies in plane crash

One of the initial backers of infamous torrenting site The Pirate Bay, Carl Lundström, has died after crashing his aircraft in bad weather. He took off in his Mooney M20 propeller plane from Zagreb, the capital of Croatia, en route to Zürich in Switzerland, but local media reports that he crashed into a cabin on Slovenia's …

  1. Burgha2

    Good

    As per title

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Inherited a fortune in 1973 from his family's crispbread corporation

    I can see how that might make you crackers.

  3. Stu J

    Another advert for 90%+ inheritance tax

    See title

  4. ArguablyShrugs

    Probably did nazi the hut, being all knackered up.

    But at least we got a cracking good story out of it!

  5. Dave314159ggggdffsdds Silver badge

    Shame about the plane. M20s are pretty.

    1. ICL1900-G3 Silver badge

      And fairly quick, too. I did my 'complex aircraft ' conversion in one

  6. wolfetone Silver badge

    Another victim of the cloud.

  7. DaveLE
    Stop

    muh far right

    being anti-immigration and anti-EU is NOT "FAR RIGHT"

    did he advocate for an absolute ruler for life and the rule of the state over all industry ?

    Let me guess .... No

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: muh far right

      How about:

      "In 1985, Lundström was linked to a skinhead gang attacking immigrants in Sweden and was a member of the far-right Bevara Sverige Svenskt party, which campaigned against immigration with slogans like "Låt inte din dotter bli en negerleksak" (Don't let your daughter become a negro toy)"

      Does that make you far right? No? What does then, eh?

      Idiot.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: muh far right

        Perhaps you could enlighten us all on the root cause of the now all too frequent explosions that are happening in Sweden (hint they didn't occur in the past).

        If you have a daughter I feel sorry for her.

        If you don't then perhaps when you do have a daughter you may see what this is all about.

        Idiot.

        1. Stevie

          Re: muh far right

          Immigrants explode when exposed to Sweden?

          Learn summat every day,

          1. Kane
            Childcatcher

            Re: muh far right

            Exploding Immigrants?

            Won't somebody think of the children!!!

        2. Jamie Jones Silver badge

          Re: muh far right

          What a braindead comment! On so many levels. It's too dumb to even debate - it would be like trying to have a rational debate with flat-earthers.

          That sort of horse-shit demonization is the sort of stuff dumb right-wingers say to their even dumber followers, as they rob them blind.

          Did you lose your way when looking for Alex Jones? Mind you, I don't think even he claimed that all people with daughters should be racist shitheads.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: muh far right

      No one said it was. Problem is some people with those views also have a penchant for shaving their heads and kicking foreigners.

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: muh far right

      You're not very good at this.

  8. DaveLE

    muh far right

    being anti-immigration and anti-EU is NOT "FAR RIGHT"

    did he advocate for an absolute ruler for life and the rule of the state over all industry ?

    Let me guess .... No

    1. IGotOut Silver badge

      Re: muh far right

      Posting twice make you look double the idiot.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: muh far right

        Even a broken clock is wrong twice a day.

    2. Wang Cores

      Re: muh far right

      Is Mussolini not far right?

      "Fascism should rightly be called Corporatism, as it is the merger of corporate and government power."

      Hm. Wonder where that could be happening.

      1. Graham Dawson

        Re: muh far right

        He never said that. You can place your argument in jeopardy by relying on unresearched falsehoods as evidence of your position.

        https://politicalresearch.org/2005/01/12/mussolini-corporate-state

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: muh far right

          Interesting. In your link it attributes the following quote to Mussolini

          "State intervention in economic production arises only when private initiative is lacking or insufficient, or when the political interests of the State are involved. This intervention may take the form of control, assistance or direct management."

          Which is indirectly "Fascism should rightly be called Corporatism, as it is the merger of corporate and government power." because when the fascist state intervenes and takes control it is corporatism. Unlike communism a fascist state is not a seizure of the means of production.

          Tricky. Although as put in the article it's not written down I personally think it would be difficult to doubt it was said at some point.

          "I can't believe it's not butter" - Mahatma Gandhi (Gandhi was born in 1869 which was the same year Margarine was invented by Hippolyte Mège-Mouriès)

          1. Graham Dawson

            Re: muh far right

            The problem is, that paraphrase is deliberately intended to create the belief that fascism is a merger of the state and private business interests, when it's nothing of the sort. This idea directly contradicts Mussolini's own writings and actions, especially his dictum of everything within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state.

            The "corporatism" referred to here is nothing to do with commercial corporations (as the link goes on to explain) but is instead more akin to syndicalism, with an interest in reducing people down to corporate groups defined by common interests. Think tribes and clans, or old-style guilds (which, again, the link uses as an example), where people of a certain profession are grouped together into a body (i.e. the "corp" in corporate, from the latin corpus), and it is that syndicated body which participates in government as a collective. So you'd have a steel-workers guild, a farmers guild, a baker's guild and so on, each wielding corporate power and influence, and each participating as a sub-unit of the state.

            Mussolini started out as a socialist and only moderated insofar as he abandoned the idea of the direct seizure of the means of production, which he replaced with the belief that commerce should be subservient to corporate groups, which were in turn subservient to the state. He's only called "far right" now because of a certain Austrian painter's bad fanfiction of his and Giovani Gentile's political manifestos. Had the small disagreement of 1939 to 1945 not happened, or had Italy joined the Allies rather than the Axis (which almost happened), Mussolini would probably have been characterised a radical syndicalist instead.

            1. Ian Johnston Silver badge

              Re: muh far right

              Fascism requires - inter alia - rigid state control of private businesses. It's part of the definition. Nazism is fascism with added antisemitism.

          2. Andrew Scott Bronze badge

            Re: muh far right

            Really, margarine taste like butter? my dad said that it used to come with coloring that you added later to make it look more like butter. Awful stuff, used to get "bread and butter" using margarine. one reason i liked going to my grandmothers house. she used real butter. texture and taste nothing like margarine.

            1. John Brown (no body) Silver badge

              Re: muh far right

              You must be in the USA. IIRC, that "add and stir in the colour yourself after purchase" thing was down to lobbying by the dairy people who, trying to protect their market, claimed people might be fooled if margarine was sold looking too much like butter and so got laws passed to only allow it to be sold in it's "natural" greyish colour. The rest of the world just mandated that it could not be called butter and assumed the consumer was clever enough to tell the difference and maybe even be able to read :-)

      2. Bebu sa Ware
        Windows

        Re: muh far right

        Is Mussolini not far right?

        Curiously little Benny started political life as a socialist.

        Whether the deceased retain their political beliefs is another question but persisting in atheism while requesting admission from St Peter probably not the most rational course.

        1. Not Yb Silver badge

          Re: muh far right

          When Benny became deceased, he was not socialist at all. What point were you hoping to make?

        2. John Brown (no body) Silver badge

          Re: muh far right

          "Whether the deceased retain their political beliefs is another question but persisting in atheism while requesting admission from St Peter probably not the most rational course."

          You appear to be making the assumption there is an afterlife. Something even harder to prove than whether Mussolini was a socialist or a fascist.

    3. Andrew Scott Bronze badge

      Re: muh far right

      maybe not, but it sure makes you sound orange.

  9. hittitezombie

    Good riddance

    I didn't knew about his Nazi background. Good riddance.

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Weirdly I feel that digital pirates tend to be much less likely to be right wing.

    For example, the following sentiment:

    "Freedom and sharing is good for mankind... but not with him, he's got dark skin"

    1. ecofeco Silver badge

      Yeah, this one left me scratching my head.

    2. Charlie Clark Silver badge

      There's an overlap with some of the more extreme forms of "libertarianism", which why Thiel, Altman, et al. think that all data (copyright, health records, etc.) should be available to them to make commercial products from and any form of state regulation is anathema. They dream of essentially pay-to-play republics where everything is organised technically and the beneficient dictator only occasionally has to intervene. I think Thiel was getting ready to do this on island of Honduras and somewhere in California there are plans for "freedom cities". This is why Musk can admit to being a pot-smoking, ketamine-chugging nerd while he plants an enormous KEEP OFF THE GRASS (no pun intended) sign on his lawn.

      1. Outski
        Headmaster

        Honduras - not an island

        1. Jamie Jones Silver badge
          Happy

          Not that one, the other Honduras! You know... the lesser known island one!

        2. doublelayer Silver badge

          They did say "island of Honduras". I have no information about the plan they're talking about, but Honduras has a bunch of islands in two oceans.

          1. John Brown (no body) Silver badge
            Joke

            And there was me looking for an islandd full of Honduras. I have no idea what a Hondura is though.

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        I've said this before, but the "libertarianism" that so many ultra-rich tech bros are alleged fans of is *very* clearly a one-way thing.

        They want the freedom to do what *they* want, while simultaneously being able to stop and crush anyone getting in their way.

        Peter Thiel is the one who's been most open about this:-

        I remain committed to the faith of my teenage years: to authentic human freedom as a precondition for the highest good. I stand against confiscatory taxes, totalitarian collectives, and the ideology of the inevitability of the death of every individual. For all these reasons, I still call myself “libertarian.”

        But I must confess that over the last two decades, I have changed radically on the question of how to achieve these goals. Most importantly, I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible.

        These aren't the words of someone who cares about the liberty of *anyone* except himself and his rich friends. These are the words of a would-be neo-feudalist and fascist. People like Thiel are the enemies of true liberty (regardless of what their belief system self-servingly calls itself) and of democracy.

        Much the same applies to their alleged fandom of free speech. Elon Musk spoke of being a "free speech absolutist" when he took over Twitter, then showed how hollow his grandstanding, self-aggrandising commitment to free speech was after he immediately started kicking people off the platform for prominently disagreeing with *him*.

        1. ArguablyShrugs

          The billionaire feckers basically took '1984' as a guidebook, not a warning...

        2. ArguablyShrugs

          These are the words of a would-be neo-feudalist and fascist.

          Amen, brother. Couldn't have said it better.

  11. KittenHuffer Silver badge
    Coat

    I guess .....

    ..... someone in the cabin left the landing light on!

    1. Andy Non Silver badge

      Re: I guess .....

      I wonder if the incident will appear in the log?

  12. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Rest in Peace

    He tried to make the world a better place.

    Fuck the copyright mafia and fuck those who try to destroy Sweden from within.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Rest in Peace

      Hi* Elon!

      * or should that be heil?

    2. IGotOut Silver badge

      Re: Rest in Peace

      Oh look, another AC troll

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Rest in Peace

      He tried to make the world a better place

      Seems like he finally succeeded.

    4. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Rest in Peace

      He tried to make the world a better place.

      Except for anyone who tries to make a living through music, film or writing...

      1. Alan Brown Silver badge

        Re: Rest in Peace

        Media corps have been doing that for decades.

        They allow a couple of exceptional individuals to make money but the vast majority end up retiring owing even more than when they started out via contractual relationships which would be characterised as modern slavery in any other segment

        Politics is complex at the best of times, but the best way of describing how most media companies work is "What's mine is mine and what's yours is mine too". Hence the global coyright carveups, damaging periods of copyright protection and heritability of copyright without restrictions - which has already seen a couple of software author heirs pull critical code out of GPL and attempt to go for licensing fees from those using it

        Major reform has been needed for a long time and one of the things that outfits like TPB were hoping to do was cause a critical mass in forcing that to happen

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Rest in Peace

          Major reform has been needed for a long time and one of the things that outfits like TPB were hoping to do was cause a critical mass in forcing that to happen

          And how's that going?

    5. BartyFartsLast Silver badge

      Re: Rest in Peace

      By successfully crashing into a mountain?

  13. Eric Olson

    And there was much rejoicing

    Finally, an extremist doing the right thing and plowing themselves into a mountain.

    I do feel bad for the habitat he likely destroyed. though.

    1. heyrick Silver badge

      Re: And there was much rejoicing

      Can't be that bad. The article says "splitting the hut in two" so it's not exactly fweeeeeerrrrrrr-kaboom.

      1. Bebu sa Ware
        Windows

        Re: And there was much rejoicing

        "splitting the hut in two"

        I immediately wondered what were the odds of hitting any structure on the side of a mountain? Unless Slovenian mountains are jam packed with huts I would have thought the probability of the bisection of an alpine cabin would be infinitesimal. Manus Dei?

        Inheriting great wealth... blatant disregard of the standards of common decency and of the law of the land... NAZI etc etc

        Seemingly a well trodden path to obloquy.

    2. ArguablyShrugs

      Re: And there was much rejoicing

      > I do feel bad for the habitat he likely destroyed. though

      I specifically asked the mountain hut in question, and it said it was really glad it could be of service in killing Nazis.

      RIP, you good ole mountain hut. Your deeds and sacrifice will be always remembered! Semper Fi. and all of that...

  14. Philo T Farnsworth Silver badge

    Or at least that's what *they* want you to think.

    No conspiracy "theories?"

    Come on, folks.

  15. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Hackneyed

    So, how's that cloud working out for you?

  16. Michael Hoffmann Silver badge
    Boffin

    Staying out of the discussion and focusing purely on the aviation aspect:

    Aviation safety network link:

    https://asn.flightsafety.org/wikibase/484185

    This "ADS-B data indicates the aircraft was cruising at 9675 ft baro when it approached an area with several mountain tops and began a descending right hand turn which progressed into a spiral. The last ADS-B return showed an average rate of -17250 fpm. "

    indicates the classical graveyard spiral of a non-IFR rated pilot flying into IMC (the cloud).

    "At 0930 LT, about 10 minutes after the accident, the nearby Ljubljana Airport automated surface observing system reported winds from 320 degrees at 7 knots, ~4.5 miles surface visibility, light rain, 2000 ft above ground level (agl) broken layer and 3200 ft above ground level (agl) overcast ceiling, temperature 9°C, dew point 8°C, and an altimeter setting of 29.74 inches of mercury. "

    indicates that icing was likely not a factor.

    Looks like he managed to buy a very nice aircraft off his ill-gotten gains, the 2005 M20R is a sweet machine, but no turbo-charged engine to stay above the clouds (though at some point you have to come down). Maybe too much aircraft to handle, it's fast as, easy to fall behind the thing.

    1. IvyKing Bronze badge

      Shades of JFK Jr. Can't believe that is has been almost 26 years.

      1. Michael Hoffmann Silver badge

        Sadly, you needn't take some other "celebrity" or otherwise prominent person: inadvertent flight into IMC is one if not the biggest killer of pilots.

        Every instructor will tell you "get your IFR rating and keep it current", it's a mystery why so many don't. I did mine back to back, while my PPL wasn't even dry yet.

  17. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Too much right wing?

    That might explain the crash.

    Pilots should balance their wings in flight. Near equal amounts of left and right usually suffices.

    1. John Brown (no body) Silver badge

      Re: Too much right wing?

      There are some strange looking aircraft out there, but seeming in the minority, thankfully.

  18. anonymous boring coward Silver badge

    Couldn't have happened to a nicer guy.

  19. spold Silver badge

    Pirate Bay....

    Well if the plane had a cockpit voice recorder I best the last bit of it was "Arrrrrrrrrrrrrr!".

    And at the end of the day he did shiver some timbers.

POST COMMENT House rules

Not a member of The Register? Create a new account here.

  • Enter your comment

  • Add an icon

Anonymous cowards cannot choose their icon

Other stories you might like