While you might view it as hypocrisy, keep in mind that users of HN are not one hive mind all having the same position, you you should expect a diversity of ideas and voices. Even an individual human routinely holds contradictory beliefs or principles simultaneously.

Is there a way to split the difference in that one is a profit driven (questionably, maybe, at this point) paid service basing itself on the consumption of that copyrighted information, whilst the other had no profit incentive whatsoever and was also a private individual?

There's also the fact that the copyright owners in this case are pushing for trial, whilst in the Aaron Swartz situation, JSTOR was not.

Just in having written that out I've convinced myself they're not really comparable cases, where I kinda thought they were after reading your comment.