The same set of actions from his own network would have been mere copyright infringement. He wanted to make it less likely that he'd get sued, so he did it from

The same set of actions from his own network would have been mere copyright infringement. He wanted to make it less likely that he'd get sued, so he did it from someone else's network. I'm probably misunderstanding you: How could he have done the same from his home network? The articles he was downloading were only accessible from MIT intranet, not from the public Internet, no?