The price of $40 has nothing to do with copyright.
It's not. Unless it's a way to drive people to buy subscription. That is: "pay $40 for a single article, or pay just $19.99 a month to access all of them". Which is also crappy.
> Obviously these opinions are in conflict with the business with which I'm involved, and are certainly not shared by most others within the industry.
This is true, unfortunately (same goes for media such as audio and video, sadly).