You should see what kind of shit disturbing Robert T Morris (the Y Combinator partner) was up to back in the day. If Aaron Swartz was facing 30 years for his curl script in a closet, rtm's hacking would have him on death row today by comparison. His worm was pretty bad ass - way ahead of its time.

Taking down a large part of the internet was not a good thing, but obviously the guy had/has a lot to offer society, and not ruining his life with prison was the right call.

A lot of us are not that different, either in terms of what we came from, or where we are now.