Was he? He was never tried, and neither a court nor a jury made a finding either way. The evidence that is publicly available doesn't back up some of the charges against him and at best is ambiguous as to whether his actions would result in even a 3 months prison sentence, if anything, if he had had the chance to have his case heard in court. Especially given that with his earlier work with PACER it's quite likely that his goal with JSTOR was to gain access to and release documents which, legally, should have been in the public domain.

Besides which, whether or not he violated the law is only partially relevant as the morality of the law is also at issue. How would you feel if your only option was to plead guilty to a law you felt was unjust?

Never having been through a similar situation, I cannot say what I would do if I were in his shoes. I believe that he didn't believe that what he did warranted decades of jail time. I believe that the prosecutor believed that his crimes did justify jail time.

But your statement reflects two facts: that he did end up committing suicide (not known a priori) and that he chose not to accept guilt when he didn't believe he was guilty (and I fully suspect you've never been in that type of situation at the severity of the Swartz case, so it's hard to definitively state that you would just take the jail time)

As others have said, he would also be branded a felon, which in the US is enough to ruin most people's professional careers - not to mention a host of other very strict restrictions.