I mean he was arrested initially not for the material downloaded but the fact that he, not an MIT student, was found hiding in a facilities closet with his laptop hooked into the network.

I get that MIT's police were meant to join him in a chorus of "Information wants to be free", but let's not act like it's unreasonable to want someone arrested or prosecuted who was not authorized to be in an equipment closet with their computer wired into a switch.