> The new policy states explicitly the longstanding practice [...]

Someone is inevitably going to bring up Aaron Swartz as the poster child for overzealous federal prosecution. To head that off at the pass:

- Swartz persisted in his downloading of JSTOR documents despite knowing that he was causing what amounted to a denial of service attack. He significantly impacted researcher around the globe, for weeks. The impact of this on the scientific community is not understood by most armchair Swartz defenders; publication and grant deadlines, for example, do not wait for "I can't get access to the papers I need on JSTOR." He even set out to speed up the rate at which he was downloading articles by deploying more equipment on MIT's network.

- JSTOR is a non-profit organization that exists for the sole purpose of archiving, cataloging, and providing low cost access to journals for small organizations. It's a bit like protesting high food prices and half-a-trillion-dollar farm bills...by repeatedly chaining shut the doors of the local co-op grocery store because they "enable the system" (or something.)

- Swartz had gotten in trouble for pulling this sort of stunt with PACER (which was far more deserving; the federal court system is mandated to provide the service at cost but has been inflating fees at an astronomical rate, essentially treating it as a for-profit business piggy bank.) The FBI and federal prosecutors pulled him in for a meeting and said "tread very, very carefully, son." What did he do? Ran along and did the same thing with JSTOR.

- Swartz was initially indicted by a grand jury. Common folks, not devil-horned federal prosecutors, thought there was a case.

It is often reported/claimed that Swartz was "going" to jail for X decades or "facing" X decades of jail time

- The case never went to trial and it is unlikely he would have been convicted of all charges (though it is almost certain he would have been convicted of at least some of the charges; he left a preponderance of evidence.)

- The claim of X years is based off combining maximum sentencing guidelines for all the charges, which is never the result for white collar criminal convictions.

And last but not least: prosecutors spent a year and a half negotiating a plea deal - down to a few months in Club Fed. He then refused the deal, in a way that made it look very much like he'd purposefully yanked prosecutor's chains while trying to win his case in the court of public opinion.

He rejected the deal over the advice of legal team I'd classify as "better than the best money can buy", friends (including people like Lawrence Lessig), his family, his partner, etc. Swartz was happy to knowingly do the crime and wanted the glory and cred for it, but his ego could not stand the possibility of "the time".