His sentence was probably a lot lighter in in 1988 because back then the only stuff on the Internet was internal to universities/government/research and non-commercial by definition. I am pretty confident the judge, prosecutor, etc. had no idea what the Internets were and had no personal interest in it. There was probably no AUSA trying to make a name for himself as the world's authority on cybercrime. Etc.
More importantly, he was a super sympathetic defendant, not someone who had previously done virtually the same thing to the DOJ and gotten off scott-free.
OTOH, if you want to see a really politically unconnected, very "unsympathetic" defendant get utterly fucked, the Escher Aurenheimer ("weev") case is a perfect example.
More importantly, he was a super sympathetic defendant, not someone who had previously done virtually the same thing to the DOJ and gotten off scott-free.