He was downloading information from a pay service that the university subscribed to for its students. This was an expensive science database. The information was by no means ‘free’ to everyone, which was in fact the reason he did the action. The man had some delusional notion that all information must be free.
What pirates of his ilk don’t grasp is that if such information is to be free, everyone who produces and distributes it must be slaves.
well, that is certainly not what I read. He was downloading in bulk from a free info site. I am sure now that he committed suicide, the powers that be are attempting to magnify whatever he did into a huge deal. You are buying into it, like that he had it coming. That is wrong.