from Hacker News

Pirate Bay co-founder Carl Lundström has died

by HeckFeck on 3/13/25, 12:26 PM with 92 comments

• by akimbostrawman on 3/13/25, 1:23 PM

  RIP. He might have only been a backer but he helped pave the way for P2P torrenting getting mainstream attention and eternally pissing off the content mafia in true hacker spirit.

• by GardenLetter27 on 3/13/25, 1:35 PM

  He provided ISP services, he wasn't exactly a co-founder.

  The TPB AFK documentary is quite good about the trial.

  Crazy that they got harsher sentences than a lot of rapists in Sweden - like the guy who got only 14 months and then received ~$80k USD from the government: https://www.riksdagen.se/sv/dokument-och-lagar/dokument/skri...

• by ghuntley on 3/13/25, 1:53 PM

  We just lost another Aaron Swartz. Without Carl, there would have been no https://prq.se/. Without Pauraque, there would be no WikiLeaks, Pirate Bay and a host of other big things that fundamentally shaped the world. Shit, governments were toppled.

• by boramalper on 3/13/25, 1:17 PM

  I think Carl was more of an early supporter and provided vital services without which TPB might not exist but I'm not sure if he should be considered a co-founder (or is considered so by the other three).

• by antiracist on 3/13/25, 1:45 PM

  Essential reading for anyone curious about Carl Lundström's life outside of bankrolling The Pirate Bay:

  https://www.theregister.com/2012/09/21/pirate_bay_fascist_ba...

  https://www.theregister.com/2009/02/26/pirate_bay_neo_nazi

  > Lundström was linked to a gang of skinheads that attacked Latin American tourists in Stockholm in the mid-1980s. Over the years, Lundström has switched his support from Keep Sweden Swedish to the far-right headbangers party New Democracy - but was thrown out for being too right wing. He's currently bankrolling 100 candidates for the Swedish equivalent of the BNP.

• by ddtaylor on 3/13/25, 1:27 PM

  TPB has paved the way for so many of us to walk. RIP Carl.

• by _mitterpach on 3/13/25, 1:08 PM

  So many tragic plane incidents lately. Is there any reason for this increased occurence, or is it actually within normal margins?

• by Philpax on 3/13/25, 1:46 PM

  His politics were awful, but it's still a shame to see someone who enabled TPB's existence passing away. Partial RIP, I guess.

• by southernplaces7 on 3/14/25, 11:46 AM

  >The propeller plane split into two after crashing into a wooden cabin in the Velika Planina mountain

  Had to laugh at this though. "Velika Planina", the incredibly original name for this mountain means "Big Mountain" in Serbo Croatian and slovenian. The news article basically said "Big Mountain mountain".

• by thrance on 3/13/25, 4:13 PM

  The amount of people rushing to defend the actions of a white supremacist in this thread is deeply disturbing. His past ties to "Keep Sweden Swedish" (a known neonazi organization) are well established.

• by piva00 on 3/13/25, 3:45 PM

  Carl Lundström was a financier of TPB's operations but otherwise he was a far-right nativist nutjob. Thanks for providing the money, Carl, for the rest I'm glad you are not around anymore.

• by dmos62 on 3/14/25, 10:09 AM

  Is hosting a Bittorrent tracker resource-intensive? Is paying for it a founder-level contribution?

• by NoGravitas on 3/13/25, 4:10 PM

  Broke TrueAnon rule 3: never get in a small airplane or a helicopter.

• by incognito124 on 3/13/25, 1:44 PM

  This kind of dampens my enthusiasm for getting a PPL

• by 1970-01-01 on 3/13/25, 2:33 PM

  This may be worthy of the black bar if politics are properly ignored and the tech value/virtue isn't. RIP.

• by bhouston on 3/13/25, 1:39 PM

  Note to self, if I ever get rich fight the urge to get into flying. I don't know the stats off hand, but the number of people that die in small plane crashes seems quite high.

• by tapeworm on 3/13/25, 1:31 PM

  Just a reminder to everyone that The Pirate Bay was set up to facilitate copyright infringement on a large scale, depriving creators of significant earnings for their work. The involvement of anyone in this is both illegal and immoral.

  Something to consider before lauding Carl Lundström for his contribution. Also consider that he was a white supremacist and was deeply involved in far right politics.

  He was not a man who deserves a glowing eulogy.