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.
I would say he wasn't just a backer. There's not a lot of people willing to back sites like this, and even if they were, they're unlikely to meet one another. It's possible TPB wouldn't even happen without him.
The historic reality begs to differ: Sweden covers large parts of the traditional homelands of non-Swedish people. Current reality differs as well, obviously. No matter how you twist it and turn it, the argument can only make sense for a hypothetical, geographically smaller Sweden that does not exist.
> The joy of driving artists and musicians into bankruptcy is more important than any of that, apparently.
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).
> In 2018, he was sentenced, together with his accomplice, to pay half a million kronor in damages to the two women he helped rape. But since he could not pay any damages, it was instead the taxpayers who were forced to pay it for him. This is what the plaintiff's lawyer for one of the two raped women tells Samnytt.
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.
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.
Do you think Carl's life long political activism outside of hosting TPB should be taken into account when deciding whether to compare him Aaron Swartz or not? Or do you think that his actions with TPB where so noble and important that it outweighs anything else he might have done before and after?
> Do you think Carl's life long political activism outside of hosting TPB should be taken into account when deciding whether to compare him Aaron Swartz or not? Or do you think that his actions with TPB where so noble and important that it outweighs anything else he might have done before and after?
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?
Both Swartz and Lundström seemed to have been first and foremost passionate and unyielding about their politics and I'm sure they both considered their lifelong political activism their true meaningful work, certainly much more important than the things they're most remembered for. Both were willing to sink their considerable wealth into furthering their political causes. Both realised early that the internet would be a vital platform and 'battle ground' for spreading their politics. Both have been willing to break the law in the name of their political ideology.
I guess when I put it like that, they actually do have a lot in common.
Oh absolutely. I think it's very safe to say that Aaron Swartz would have hated everything Carl Lundstöm stood for. I was being slightly facetious with my comparison.
> Aaron Swartz is so young there is really nothing much to say about him.
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.
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.
Carl Lundström was literally an active member of a group that would literally wear Nazi symbols and openly shout sieg heil while doing the Nazi salute in public.
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).
Small planes like that crash all the time. You’re just hearing about it because we’re all on high alert - and in this circumstance, because the deceased has some fame.
It's an open secret, borderline meme in the General Aviation community about rich plane owners being overconfident and impatient, resulting in flying into poor weather conditions and getting into trouble.
Chartered (= small) planes crash sometimes. Helicopters crash a lot.
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.
To be a bit pedantic this isn't a chartered flight. That's a whole level above this that does require some more specialized licensure. Carl was flying his own plane so this would be good ol' General Aviation. A private pilot's license is not allowed to offer flights for pay only cost sharing (at least in the US) and only for flights the pilot would otherwise have taken without passengers (tougher to prove but easy to mess up if you're trying to skirt the law).
When I was much younger, my mom worked for a wealthy small business owner. Her job involved overnight supervision of pregnant horses; the foals were very valuable, and the owners of the sires were paid handsomely. Anyway, sometimes I would go along for a sleep over, enjoy the adventure of being away from home, play some pinball. Whatever.
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.
A lot of plane/helicopter deaths are assassinations. I'm not saying any of the recent ones are, but the data for "normal margins" is probably skewed.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
Glad he accidentally did at least one half-decent thing with his money once. Wonder what his reason was for it, it's not a stance I'd expect from someone with his political leanings.
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.
BSS ("keep Sweden Swedish") were Nazis. I am old enough to remember them heiling in the streets (real proper heiling, not the kind you accidentally do at a presidential inauguration. Twice). He never really managed to distance himself from that. Not that he seemed to try.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
https://www.faa.gov/media/19371 "get-there-itis"
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.
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.
>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-...
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.
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.
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.
He was a man deserving a glowing eulogy.
White supremacy: very bad, unethical, and immoral.
Maybe reconsider your priorities here.