True, I had considered this angle but I ended up not adding it to the comment. But I recognize the importance of those factors
> the consequences in this case were disproportionate to the crime, with JSTOR listing inflated damages
No contest on the inflated damages, which is part of most legal cases unfortunately, but he could have gotten the best lawyers to this case.
> even though we have no clue what he was planning to do
Scraping files is an action on itself that gives several suggestions on what he was going to do with them.
> and you say "prankster" like was just trolling MIT and JSTOR
Well he was at least doing that.
> A few years ago, he downloaded a significant portion of the articles on the Westlaw legal-research database in order to analyze their sources of funding, in the hope of determining whether economic interests affected their conclusions. He gave the data to a Stanford law student, and she published an article in the Stanford Law Review based on his findings. [1]
[0]: https://archive.org/stream/GuerillaOpenAccessManifesto/Goamj...
[1]: http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/03/11/requiem-for-a-d...
Lastly your whole comment is framed as a personal attack. You say "inconsequential" even though we have no clue what he was planning to do since he was made to delete the files, and you say "prankster" like was just trolling MIT and JSTOR. I recommend instead that you instead try to read a little about him, he accomplished much more then you gave him credit for.