The supporter of a controversial file-sharing website has been killed in a plane crash in Slovenia.
Carl Lundström, a Swedish entrepreneur and backer of The Pirate Bay, had taken off from Zagreb, Croatia, and was heading towards Zurich, Switzerland.
He was killed when the plane crashed into a rural cabin in the mountains of Slovenia – the only passenger onboard the private plane at the time, according to initial reports.
Lundström was also the heir to a Swedish ‘crispbread’ brand known as Wasabröd.
He was backed The Pirate Bay from around 2003 to 2005, eventually serving time in prison for promoting copyright infringement with the controversial site.
Lundström served four months in prison for his involvement and paid a £2,441,162 fine.
In 2012, the UK banned the website after a High Court ruling found the website breaches copyright laws on a large scale.
The website hasn’t been without its dangers, however.
In 2019, the site played host to a new strain of malware that was nicknamed the ‘Russian Doll’.
What is The Pirate Bay, and why is it so controversial?
The Pirate Bay is an online index of millions of files – accessible to most people online.
It features movies, video games, pornography and more, gaining attention in the early 2000s for multiple copyright infringements.
It was founded in Sweden in 2003, and has been shut down multiple times – but has always made a return.
In 2014, Swedish police seized servers and computers from a server room in Stockholm.
It’s banned in some areas, including the United Kingdom.
Spotted by cybersecurity researchers at Kaspersky Labs, the illicit activity on the peer-to-peer site has led to the program being downloaded around 10,000 times and spreading fast.
Like its namesake, the Russian Doll malware unpacks itself once downloaded to install adware and other programs on the victim’s computer, snarling it up and rendering it unusable.
The crisp brand Wasabröd is estimated to be worth £3,698,525,160.
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