Playing the Devil's advocate for a sec, I'd ask the public if it is prepared to fund hosting on those publications in perpetuity? And to answer my own question, I think we should demand that scientific papers are made available for free by publicly-funded scientific libraries.
The library of Congress could host it. Hell I’d ask for my taxes to be raised if needed to host these publications for everyone.
osti.gov
> I'd ask the public if it is prepared to fund hosting on those publications in perpetuity
are we pretending pdf hosting is actually costly or what? the devil should hire better advocates