Pirate Bay co-founder Carl Lundström has died
independent.co.uk
independent.co.uk
Comments like these distract from the larger point you're making because they misrepresent the nature of the effect that TPB (and similar services) actually have had on artists, and on the historical relationship between artists and the capital class throughout history.
It's a common misconception that filesharing harms artists - that's a misconception put forth by the RIAA and its ilk because it harms them. In reality, the relationship is much more complicated, because artists aren't the ones who directly benefit from album sales anyway, and they are themselves often exploited by the record labels who are the ones directly harmed by filesharing (to the extent that you believe filesharing even constitutes harm, which is a separate and debated point).
Case in point EU study proving that.
https://gizmodo.com/the-eu-suppressed-a-300-page-study-that-...
The EU Suppressed a 300-Page Study That Found Piracy Doesn’t Harm SalesThe 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...
So the first issue was that the government stepped in to give his victims money. I hope that the government is then going after him to make that whole I don’t know since this seems to be a press release from the government criticizing the judiciary.
> The reason is that the Supreme Court has ruled that the convicted rapist may have been under 18 when he raped two women in Malmö in 2017 and was therefore sentenced to an excessively harsh sentence by first the Malmö District Court and later the Skåne and Blekinge Court of Appeal.
> The damages correspond to a compensation of 60,000 kronor per month for the 14 months that JK believes the convicted rapist was forced to spend too long in prison. The decision to give money to a rapist in this way has rightly met with strong criticism from the public, who think it is wrong for a convicted rapist to receive so much money.
While optically, politically, and emotionally it’s undesirable and reprehensible, from another perspective it’s admirable that the Swedish justice system seems to be upholding the law regardless of who it benefits. A legal system needs to protect criminal systems from the government mob just as much as it needs to protect society from criminals.
So he had fraudulently received that money too.
Hmm... an unnamed source.
> "I believe we made the assessment that the review that the border police did of the passport was the one we presented to the court", says prosecutor Kristina Amilon to Uppdrag granskning.
vs a formal representative of the government.
So maybe faked but doesn't sound like there's actually accepted evidence. If faked, of course that exposes him to further legal liability which should be used to prosecute him further since he defrauded the government (+ get back the money).
This is why I stay away from tabloids - the reporting quality is extremely poor & intentionally sensationalized and often precisely to try to mislead you.
There is a world of difference between Aaron Swartz and Carl Lindström, starting with their political ideologies (which in Aaron's case was inseparable from his life's work) and extending through the way they executed on them and their degree of involvement in the causes for which they are the most known.
I don't think Aaron Swartz would be happy to hear this comparison if he were alive today.
I made no claim about him one way or the other in this regard.
That said, if you're going to make the claim that his political ideology was inseparable from his work (in direct contrast to most of the other comments here which say they should be kept separate), then it's worth spelling out why people would celebrating the work of a man with a documented career of being a prominent member of neo-Nazi parties, spanning over 40 years.
I think people in this thread have already spelled it out. They appreciate The Pirate Bay and what it stands for.
Another question to add to that list: Do you think that the rest of Aaron Swartz's life work was so inconsequential compared to the one thing that everyone seems to remember him for simply because it led to his death, that it justifies this comparison? Is that not relevant in deciding whether to draw a comparison between these two individuals who could not have been more different, both in terms of political ideology and in terms of how they integrated that ideology into their daily lives and actions?
I guess when I put it like that, they actually do have a lot in common.
Aaron Swartz did not commit any crimes. Pretty sure that's what the parent commenter was getting at.
This is absolutely insulting, given how clear he Aaron Swartz was about his beliefs from a young age and how much he accomplished in effecting them before he died.
> This guy lived basically 3x of Aaron's lifetime.
I have no idea what this is supposed to imply.
You'll have to be more explicit about what you are intending to communicate by making this statement in the context of a thread about the death of a man who, when he was the same age Aaron Swartz was at the time the latter died, was a prominent member of a neo-Nazi party.
Multiple discussion threads can exist, for praise or critique.
Ideally, such threads would avoid derailing each other by focusing on specific actions, consequences or legacies.
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.
Initially almost certainly money. He had a history of being an entrepreneur and investor involved in all kinds of random businesses. Back when he first got involved with TPB, what they were doing (just hosting torrent links) wasn't technically illegal in Sweden, and he probably figured that getting shares in what had potential to become a massive web site in return for offering free hosting at the ISP he ran was a really good deal.
Of course his official story was that he wasn't really involved, he mostly just let one of his employees host this side project for free on a server at the ISP he ran. And once his politics became known, the official line from the other TPB founders was that he had never had anything to do with TPB, he just happened to own the ISP where they happened to be hosting.
There is also a story that his company had been heavily fined by the BSA over some software licensing and that he was pissed off at them and saw this as a way of getting revenge.
Outside of financing thepiratebay ge spent most of his life hiding assets from being taxed. And he also lobbied an anti-tax organisation for an even-lower-tax policy.
The only good thing about the whole pirate bay court saga was that he lost a lot of money he would have otherwise used to push his far right-agenda.
Is there any reason to believe he even wanted to distance himself from it? He ran for office just a few years ago on essentially the same platform.
Big airline crashes are virtually non-existent, to the point where US airlines had 16 fatality-free years until this January, on 210 million flights. Flying commercially is mind-boggingly safe.
https://www.faa.gov/media/19371 "get-there-itis"
Larry Silverstein, George Soros, Rupert Murdoch, Charles Koch, Donald Trump are enjoying their best lives.
And before that, David Rockefeller (til 101 years!).
Life is unfair from the beginning.
Anyway, one day (as an adult) I met the owner, shook his hand. No big deal. But the very next day I was driving along and saw black smoke, and found out later that it was coming from a helicopter crash, and one of the victims was the man I had met and shook hands with a day earlier.
It was really eerie, and of course had a relatively direct affect on our lives, not just mentally / emotionally, but ultimately the stable changed ownership and my mom ended up having to get a different job.
If there's a point, sometimes crashes (and deaths) don't matter to us, personally (even if they matter to plenty of other people), and sometimes they do. You definitely notice the ones that matter to you personally, or are just on a larger scale than is normal.
You probably don't see as many assassinations from heat stroke, submarines, etc. There's a few under "self harm", but the actual self harm deaths far exceed the whistleblower "self harm" cases to the point that they're not too statistically significant.
>From 2015 to 2020, there were a total of 7,294 accidents
>From 2015 to 2020, there were a total of 2,220 fatalities
https://flyfright.com/plane-crash-statistics/small-airplane-...
General Aviation is quite a bit less safe than commercial aviation for a lot of reasons; fewer engines means more risk of failure, lack of maintenance due to cost or understanding, pilots are less well trained (generally speaking of course), GA often flies at lower altitudes giving less time for recovery, etc.
You can scroll back through the FAA's release archive for a look at just how many incidents happen that never make the wider news you've likely never heard of unless you live in the area it happened (and maybe not even then given the state of local news).
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".
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.
He was a man deserving a glowing eulogy.
White supremacy: very bad, unethical, and immoral.
Maybe reconsider your priorities here.