You are all making the mistake of conflating data copying with theft. The real reason this is fucking ridiculous is that he was using the internet to lookup an

You are all making the mistake of conflating data copying with theft. The real reason this is fucking ridiculous is that he was using the internet to lookup an address and got information without any trespass, but was charged anyway. It's nothing like stealing, it's more like being arrested for taking and distributing photos of a home taken from a public road.