This isn't protesting the law with civil disobedience, it is breaking the law because the direct expected value of breaking the law (people having access to this specific paper) is greater then the expected cost of breaking the law (~0).
In what world does personal expected value versus expected cost of breaking the law ever become a good way to make moral decisions?
There are at least two counterarguments to this.
1) The law is written for precisely this reason. Most people do live by a cost vs benefit mindset, and the penalties of laws are generally tuned until people stop committing the crime. I wouldn't want to live in a world where the penalty for murder was only a week in prison.
2) Anyone who uses the law as a way to guide their own moral compass probably isn't very moral, because throughout history every society has had laws which are later agreed to be evil.
I suppose my question is, do you care more about expressing yourself than convincing others? If so, then that's detrimental to a message board.
In this one, where my taxes paid for the goddamned research.