I once heard of a very major website essentially being DOS-ed because a scrapper was enumerating IDs in the URL. (Can't say the name because I signed an NDA.) The engineers involved all assumed the scraping was legitimate indexing by a 3rd party or researcher.

Some guy went to jail for doing this.

It's OK that was only 13 months because it turns out that the least ethical federal prosecutors are also the dumbest.

/s

I assume you did not mean it like that, but 13 months in prison is nothing to get snarky about.

If I had to go to prison for 13 months - even if it was for something as silly as this example -, I'd most likely be out of a job and have a prior on my record, which would probably make it very hard to find a new job equivalent to the one I hold now.

13 months in prison can easily destroy somebody's professional existence, not to mention, if applicable, marriage/relationship and family.

If it is public I don't see a problem. Reminds me of wardialing in the 80s.