The story doesn't have any such details. Please remember that the most famous such case, the prosecution of Aaron Swartz until he committed suicide, was for downloading academic papers from JSTOR, presumably including many century-old texts, and that the current best system for obtaining academic papers you're legally allowed to get — Sci-hub — is on the receiving end of a series of lawsuits from companies who didn't even write the texts being copied in the first place and never paid their authors.

The prosecution of Aaron Swartz, a farcical tragedy, has nothing to do with this story.

It has everything to do with the story because it shows that most copyright claims are done in absolute bad faith and consumers are given no real tools to defend themselves.

Right now for the majority of people who get a DMCA, there is nothing they can do. There is no functional appeals process, there is no office in charge of handling bad DMCAs. Shy of actually going to court with a lawyer and attempting a suit, if a company files a bogus DMCA then you are boned.

That is an abortion of free speech and property rights, and the Swartz case is a perfect example of that. Most of the papers Swartz obtained were supposed to belong to the public, and yet he was sued into oblivion for DOING NOTHING ILLEGAL. He had no counterclaim short of going to full court with lawyers, something entirely out of his grasp and reach, and because he felt he had no alternatives to having his life ruined, he committed suicide.

It's not a farcical tragedy, it's a flipping shame for the human race.

edit - language

Whatever else we might disagree on, let's be clear that I agree with you about Swartz.

Without defending AT&T:

Schwartz was prosecuted by a US Attorney. If anything he is a poster boy of over reach of government.

Government officials seemingly beholden to corporations.

The corporation in question (JSTOR, a nonprofit) indicated their desire to drop the case several months before Aaron's suicide.

At has at least 2 things to do: it involves copyrights, and it shows that copyright enforcement (and strict at that) is not just about "the latest hits" (like with movie/music piracy for example).

According to the media companies it is just important to cover those century-old texts as the latest Star Wars movie.

People are exactly as guilty (and should feel exactly as guilty) download one as downloading the other.

Personally I can't feel guilty about it. Copyright was a compromise. A limited privilege of exclusive rights to encourage the creation of new works after which they would fall into the public domain and everyone would have full access to them.

Companies have gone back on their end of that bargain and now we have perpetual copyrights and new works will never enter the public domain. Deal broken, I feel no need to uphold my end by respecting the rights they were granted.

Sure. But it's not intellectually honest to justify downloading terabytes of the latest Hollywood blockbusters on the grounds that it's unfair that those downloads are treated the same as century-old texts. You're smuggling in an irrelevant grievance.