I doubt it. Public research papers? It was information that was accessible to anyone at MIT or something like that, his angle was that it's publicly funded research and therefore should be available to the public. Also that knowledge should be available to anyone not just people in wealthy nations. His dream did materialize with Reddit, though, so all in all his goal was realized in a significant way, despite how much the project as a whole has degraded. The company that got financially hit for the release of paywalled articles even dropped the charges, but he was still prosecuted. I think he was offered a plea deal bringing his 30 year sentence down to 7 months, but it would still mark him as a felon. He said no, countered, they said no, then he went onto the next not long after.