> US universities are famously litigious and take a hard line stance when it suits them. See Aaron Swartz.

MIT was not a party to the lawsuit against Aaron Swartz, nor was even JSTOR. It was brought entirely by the US Attorney for Massachusetts.

They claim that after the fact, after the bad press, I believe neither JSTOR or MIT

You don't have to believe them. You can look at the court records yourself, or any number of public case summaries[1].

To quote:

> Opting not to pursue a civil lawsuit against him, JSTOR reached a settlement with him in the summer of 2011 in which Swartz turned over the downloaded data to them. It was never released to the public. Neither did MIT take any civil action against him.

The lawsuit was a purely Justice initiative.

[1]: https://fija.org/library-and-resources/library/law-and-legal...

> You can look at the court records yourself

The problem with referring to the official record is that one misses what isn't in the official record.