On one hand the man lives in a dream world. It's like he's 40% regret, 40% dreams of what he's going to do with the money, and the rest is allocated to planning, living a normal life and all that.
That's sad. The right course of action would be to buy bitcoin the moment he found out whatever he had was thrown out. And let's not forget that he should have made backups.
On the other hand I root for the underdog, so I'd like him to win against the dumb state and be allowed to look his drive.
Made backups of what ? The App he used back in 2009 had no backup option. It just stored the privat key in a hidden file on his laptop.
He could of written it somewhere to not to get where he is now, but I agree, these times were not the same as we have now, with so many options to stay on top in terms of custody of our own wallets that it's not even funny anymore.